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PRESIDENT Goodluck Jonathan may have begun the search for a new and acceptable head of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), as an air of anxiety and relief already pervades its national headquarters in Abuja ahead of next week’s exit of the Director-General (DG), Ambassador Ezekiel Oladeji.
The Guardian learnt that Oladeji’s seat would become vacant on Monday, thereby creating a leadership vacuum in the agency saddled with overseeing foreign intelligence and counter-intelligence operations, being one of the nation’s very strategic security agencies.
The outgoing DG’s tenure was dogged by a string of controversies, including claims that he spent three and a half years beyond his tenure, nepotism, and alleged persecution of perceived subordinates believed to be opposed to his alleged illegal tenure, among others.
According to NIA sources, Oladeji ought to have retired on March10, 2010, when he clocked the mandatory retirement age of 60, but did not, apparently with backing from powerful people in the Presidency.
Similar violations were recorded at the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), where the immediate past Executive Secretary, Dr. Mohammed Modibbo Mohammed, overstayed his tenure at the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) by 18 months.
However, Modibbo was in August 2007 “redeployed” to UBEC to displace the commission’s boss, Dr. Lami Amodu, who had spent only four months out of a five-year tenure. Like Modibbo, the NIA DG is alleged to have spent the remainder of his extended stay at NIA “doing a lot of fighting against perceived enemies,” according to a reliable.
Last year, a Deputy High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Ambassador D.C.B. Nwanna sued the NIA boss at the National Industrial Court, challenging his purported retirement by the latter.
Nwanna had been redeployed from his UK posting, only to be barred by NIA security men from entering his office in Abuja or any NIA facility, allegedly on the DG’s orders.
The judge handling Nwanna’s case, Justice Maureen Esowe, reportedly wept in the open court last November over allegations of bias brought against her by the NIA boss; he had reportedly petitioned the President of the Industrial Court, alleging that Justice Esowe favoured Nwanna not on points of law but largely because he was of the same tribe as the judge.
However, in a similar development, a group of serving NIA officers recently petitioned President Goodluck Jonathan alleging that the ‘DG’s action or inaction’ “adversely affected espirit de corps in the agency.” It was also learnt that the officers told Jonathan that their boss allegedly took certain decisions that compromised the “security cover” of NIA operatives in foreign missions.
“This singular act has more than anything else exposed all NIA operatives to even the local staff (who are assumed to be spies themselves), since they have access to the list of all our operatives all over the world and are likely to apply it against the legitimate interest of Nigeria and hurt the Federal Government in a most terrible way,” the officers alleged.
They further accused the DG of “undue” favouritism in the recommendation of officers to be promoted, citing the last promotion interview for GL 16 to GL 17. According to them, out of 50 officers who sat for the exams, only 14 passed, with half of that number coming from the DG’s part of the country, including three officers who were allegedly confirmed to have failed but were promoted. This has generated a lot furor in the service, with from very senior officers insisting that the exercise was not transparent.
Source: Guardian/
