Abuja: The Director of Nigerian Intelligence Agency, NIA, Ambassador Ayo Oke, has maintained that he duly informed the current NSA, who is also a member of the Committee.
When he appeared before the three-man panel, which also includes the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Abubakar Malami, SAN, Oke was said to have been unruffled, saying that he did his best and had left the rest to God, but presented heaps of documents to buttress his position.
It was gathered that “Oke gave a spirited defence of his career and said there was no ill-motive behind the cash. “At the end of it all, Oke was heard saying ‘I did my best before the committee.
I have left the rest to God.”
We were informed that Oke’s testimony before the Committee suggests that there was a first briefing in his “handover note in 2015”
The funds were said to have been itemised as ‘$289million intervention fund’ approved and released to the agency by former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration in November 2014.
In addition, he was said to have informed the Committee that there was a second briefing in January 2016 in a said memo to the NSA where further details about the funds were reportedly given.
It was gathered that it was based on the second briefing that the NSA, being the super intelligence officer that he is, set up an audit team, said to have been headed by a Brigadier-General, which was said to have inspected the supposed projects for which the funds were released.
The report of that audit team was reportedly submitted in February, 2016. In May, 2016, the NSA was said to have presented a report to President Muhammadu Buhari on the NIA’s projects and exercises.
It was learnt that the President was said to have been pleased with the agency’s work. However, what our investigations revealed that the emerging intricate web of disclosures as the Osinbajo Committee continues to investigate the matter is that the area of culpability appears to be moving in the direction of the propriety of keeping government funds in a private residence.
Although the NIA’s position, as laid out by Oke before his suspension was that the private apartment was a safe house, a known practice in the intelligence community, the Osinbajo Committee is set to unravel the propriety or otherwise of the circumstances that led to the placement of the cash where the EFCC discovered it.
Whereas Mr. Oke, sources close to the Committee insists that the current National Security Adviser, General Babagana Munguno, was duly informed of the cash, when he took over as the NSA, the counter claim from the NSA’s office is that what actually happened “is significantly different from that claim.”
He explained that in the first instance, Oke did not brief the NSA at all about the existence of such funds, the total of which was put at $289m, or the projects it was meant for when the Buhari administration took office in May 2015, even though the money had been released in March of the same year.
The NSA’s office, it was learnt, only got its first knowledge of the existence of such funds during the work of the presidential committee that audited the Defense Equipment Procurement in the Armed Forces. The Committee had observed certain payments from the CBN to the NIA and raised questions drawing the attention of the NSA, the source disclosed.
The 14-day schedule set for the Committee lapses this week.
