Buhari behind my continued incarceration – Dasuki

Dasuki

Former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col Sambo Dasuki, (rtd) has told the Abuja High Court that President Muhammadu Buhari should be blamed for his continued incarceration.

Dasuki, 61, is standing trial for allegedly diverting $2.1 billion meant for the procurement of arms in the fight against Boko Haram into the private pockets of some high profile individuals.

Speaking through his counsel, Joseph Daudu (SAN), Dasuki said during the Presidential Media Chat in December 2015, Buhari instigated his continued detention despite being granted bail by three different courts.

The embattled former NSA said Buhari betrayed his emotions during the media chat when he told Nigerians that he and the Director of Radio Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, could not be released on bail because they would jump bail.

Daudu asked the court to suspend the trial of his client until the Federal Government is made to answer for contempt of court, adding that the court should also enforce Dasuki’s bail.

Counsel to the Federal Government, Rotimi Jacobs who opposed the application said the Federal Government did not disobey court orders as Dasuki was released from Kuje Prison on December 29, 2015 when he perfected his bail but was rearrested by another government agency.

Presiding judge, Justice Peter Affen, adjourned the matter till March 4 for ruling.

There are allegations in various quarters that President Buhari is pursuing a personal vendetta against Dasuki and wants him locked up by all means because the latter was instrumental to his arrest and maltreatment during the 1983 military coup.

However, Dasuki has vehemently denied arresting Buhari in the coup that ousted Buhari as head of state.

“I always respect and dignify my seniors and those in positions of authority, whether in service or after. Though as a young officer, I was reluctant to be among those that arrested him. And I was not,” he said last year in an interview with a blogger and the Publisher of Economic Confidential, Yushau Shuaib.

“I only met him (Buhari) afterward at Bonny Camp with Lawal Rafindadi. There is no way I could have maltreated him as being alleged in some quarters. I am glad most of the actors are still alive.”

Dasuki also disclosed that he had supported Buhari’s presidential aspiration in 2003, 2007 and 2011, adding that respected northerners such as Adamu Adamu, Bashir Kurfi and Wada Maida could be verify his claim. 

Col Abdulmumini Aminu (retd) has revealed that contrary to popular belief, he was the one who led a team of three Army officers to arrest Buhari. Buhari, he added, was never maltreated.

“I must confess that I led that operation. I went to Dodan Barracks that time in company of two other officers – then Major John Madaki and Lawan Gwadabe. Three of us went, but specifically I was the one that went upstairs to bring Buhari,” Aminu told Daily Trust in an interview.

“With due respect, I have been reading in the papers and listening to radio, people saying that we manhandled him, we disrespected him.  That was not true. I and General Buhari are the only two who knew what transpired upstairs and there was nothing like that.
“We gave him his absolute respect as a superior, because even before that time, we had absolute respect for him, because of whom and what he was. We respect him a lot till today and there is no animosity between us and he knew it was a military assignment that we were carrying out from our superior. He even told me at one time.”

Aminu declares that reports that Buhari was handcuffed are a “blatant lie”.

“It is a blatant lie. In an operation of that nature, we don’t carry handcuffs,” he said.

Why Oliseh quit as Super Eagles coach

Oliseh

When the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF) appointed Sunday Oliseh as Super Eagles manager it was obvious the marriage of convenience between the two wouldn’t last. But it was still something of a surprise that the former Super eagles captain quit after less than eight months in the saddle.

Oliseh is a very stubborn individual who always insists on his way and the NFF has not eased on its reputation of legendary ineptitude. The NFF had just got rid of Stephen Keshi, another former captain, and they just wanted to fill the gap and move on. They forgot that Oliseh had little or no experience at top-level management, his UEFA coaching certificate notwithstanding.

Initially Oliseh said all the nice sweet things new employees say about their new job but soon the bubble burst. He had a fall out with the authorities as well as the players.

His hard line stance caused Vincent Enyeama and Emmanuel Emenike to retire prematurely from the national team. He also controversially substituted Lukman Haruna and Rabiu Ibrahim in the first half of matches because they didn’t play to his instructions.

The 41-year-old was even intolerant of criticism, calling those who spoke out against the Eagles’ abysmal outing at the 2016 African Nations Championship (CHAN)  “insane”.

“I want to speak on the insanity that has befallen some of our national team critics. I call it insanity because you must be insane to start seeking a plebiscite on the future of the national team coach of Nigeria because we lost the CHAN,” he said in a YouTube rant.

There was no love lost between him and the NFF. After the Super Eagles crashed out in the first round of CHAN, Oliseh blamed the NFF for the shocking exit. The football body replied in kind and it took the intervention of the Sports Minister, Solomon Dalong, before frayed nerves were calmed.

But the bad blood between the two parties kept boiling and it was obvious that something would give. The stage for a showdown was set.

Oliseh suddenly announced his resignation on Twitter, to the chagrin of many Nigerians who wondered why he decided to choose such a channel, not long after his YouTube outburst. But it seems the Delta-born coach prefers to make his views known through social media instead of dealing directly with his erstwhile employers.

He is said to have resigned after he found out the NFF had contacted former Ivory Coast coach Havre Renard to replace him. According to Tijanni Babangida, Oliseh’s former personal assistant, the latter was incensed that NFF offered to pay Renard $100,000 a month as salary while he (Oliseh) was being owed four months salary of N5 million.

“So many violations of his contract. No one can work like that. NFF cannot pay Oliseh N5 million but they went promising Renard $100,000. This is sad. Why won’t he not resign?” Babangida said.

“He resigned so that NFF can do what they want to do. With match bonuses owed, salaries not paid, camping allowances too. The house NFF promised him has not even been secured for him. So, where will he stay when he comes to Abuja? Hotel?” 

The NFF responded in kind, describing the development as “good riddance to bad rubbish.”

“Oliseh is gone and we have to move forward,” Ademola Olajire, the NFF spokesperson said in an interview with the Nigeria Television Authority. “As far as we are concerned, it is good riddance to bad rubbish. He is not the kind of person we thought he was.”

Olajire faulted the claim that the NFF violated the terms of Oliseh’s contract, challenging the coach to publish details of those aspects of his contract that were breached.

He said he didn’t know the NFF’s next step “but I can tell you that we will empanel a new set of technical hands for the team. And whatever Oliseh has mishandled in his few months in charge, they will have to right.”

Samson Siasia, who also left the coaching role under very bitter circumstances some years ago, has stepped in on a temporary measure, pending the decision of the NFF to appoint a substantive coach.

In the last 20 years no Super Eagles coach has parted ways with the NFF in a way that is not acrimonious. This has become a thing of embarrassment to the country and the NFF has to look for better ways to relate with those they appoint as coaches of the national team.

A former coach of the Super Eagles, Chief Adegboye Onigbinde, said the problem with the NFF was administrative, not technical.

In an interview with Goal, Onigbinde said, when he handled the Eagles between 1982 and 1984, he “went through hell, but thank God I am alive today.”

He added: “Throughout my three years stay, I did not have an official room as a residence. For a whole year, I was not supplied with balls, from January to December in 1983.

“I requested for 30 balls but the then chairman of NFA wanted to beat me up for requesting for more than two balls.

“The painful aspect of it was that if I were a white man requesting for 30 balls, he would send someone to Germany to bring 100 balls.”

Onigbinde, who took the Eagles to Japan/Korea 2002 World Cup after the team that was captained by Oliseh was disbanded, said, he is not revealing these things to abuse people or expose them.

“What we need to do now is to learn from the past and improve, knowing that the beginning of lunacy is doing the same thing the same way all over and over and expecting a different result. We cannot get a different result.”

The naira is already devalued – Utomi

Prof Utomi

A former presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Professor Pat Utomi, believes the ongoing conversation for or against the devaluation of the naira is laughable and wrongly premised. According to him, the Nigerian currency had already been devalued.

The professor of political economy and management expert said the government could not shy away from the rate of the currency at the parallel market and insist on selling naira at the interbank rate, thereby giving room for some Nigerians to continue to benefit from the situation.

“The whole exchange rate conversation is wrongly premised. Some want the currency devalued, others do not. The naira is devalued already. It is those who do not understand the issue that are creating the problem,” he said.

“The value of the naira is known to everyone. What matters in this conversation is not the nominal value of the currency, what matters is the stability of the currency such that people can anticipate, plan and engage accordingly.”

Utomi, founder of the Lagos Business School, believes that administrative control of the currency rate by the government is difficult because of high cost. According to him, Nigerians do not possess the high level of discipline for such control to be workable in the country.

“I have heard people say that it is importers that want the naira devalued, that it is those that patronize local products that do not want the naira devalued. Ah! I have never seen that kind of illiteracy in public conversations. It is the direct opposite. It is those who import things that will not want the naira devalued, so that what they import can be cheap. If the naira is devalued, what they import will become expensive,” he stated.

Utomi, 60, called for a diversification to tourism, as a short term measure, and a drastic cut in costs to ensure that existing resources are adequate to stabilize the nation’s economy. He described the current economic challenge as temporary. Nigeria, he recalls, had experienced a similar situation in the 1980s.

“This is a temporary blip. Nigeria will not permanently be in a situation where it cannot afford to pay for its imports. Nigeria has experienced a sudden drop in its foreign income. What Nigeria can do is to cut its cost dramatically. When Nigeria experienced similar economic challenge in 1976 during Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime as Head of State, Obasanjo quickly did what we called ‘low profile.’ The Head of State’s official car was a Peugeot 504, and nobody in the whole service drove a bigger car. So, we trimmed our sales.

“We are in a similar situation today but members of the Senate intend to purchase Sports Utility Vehicles. The motorcades of governors are getting longer. So, there is a delusion on the part of the political class about Nigeria’s reality. When a country experiences a temporary blip, what may be done is borrow money to get over these difficult times while you reposition your economy either by diversification or hoping for oil prices rebound.

“It was easier back then in 1982 because Nigeria had a blocked currency, that is, the value of the naira was administratively determined by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Today, the currency rate is expected to be determined by the market. The market states that the value of the currency to the dollar is N400.

“It does not matter what the President thinks; what Pat Utomi thinks. The value of the dollar is N400. The only thing is that the Nigerian government has decided that it will sell its own dollars at a certain amount, not N400, probably N198.

“So, how does the government determine who it will sell a dollar to at N198? You can carry out all the anti corruption campaigns of the world. Someone sees that he can buy the dollar at N198 and others buy at N400 will seek to make some money. Regardless of all the army of the world in place, we must understand that human beings are greed-driven.

“I am not saying that administrative decision-making is not possible but the costs are so high and the level of discipline required is not available in this environment that I think it would work out. We should cut cost dramatically so that the resources we have can stabilize the country. Government has become bloated. Now is the time to feel the pressure and begin to make changes, even constitutionally”.

According to him, diversification would ensure that all zones become productive and impactful on the value chain. This, he said, would ensure that all zones are endowed to become globally competitive.

DSTV bows to CPC

Nigerians have suddenly discovered the power they can wield if they come together.

Recently the Consumer Protection Council (CPC) ordered MultiChoice Nigeria, owners of Digital Satellite Broadcast Television (DStv) to compensate consumers within 90 days and introduce toll-free lines to them, following confirmation of its investigations on allegations of violations of consumer rights.

The Council also directed DStv to release free-to-air channels to subscribers, even when subscription expires. It also said the South African company should compensate consumers across board for lost viewing time and reasonable equitable spread of popular sports channels, among others.

And voila! Multichoice complied – at least to one of the CPC’s directives. And it is the one that will tickle football lovers the most. The company announced that subscribers on its Compact and Compact plus bouquets will watch the full complement of the English Premier League (EPL) and the Spanish La Liga, as well as the 2016 UEFA Champions Leagues and the upcoming Euro 2016 at no extra cost.

Football fans on Compact and Compact Plus can now tune to two new channels: SuperSport 11 (DStv channel 231) and SuperSport 12 (DStv channel 232), which will be dedicated to the EPL and La Liga. Hitherto, the full football package was available to only DStv Premium subscribers on its SuperSport channels.

Managing Director of Multichoice Nigeria, John Ugbe, said DStv is providing the full football menu for Compact subscribers, because “one of MultiChoice’s key priorities is to put our subscribers’ needs at the heart of everything we do and since these have been tough economic times for everyone, we realised that our subscribers could use some good news.

“We’re excited that we can now deliver the best football action in the world to our Compact subscribers, while ensuring that this development doesn’t negatively impact them financially.”

MultiChoice Nigeria also announced a price slash on Explora and Zapper decoders bundled with the Compact bouquet. The Explora, dish kit with one month Compact subscription, initially sold at N70,000, has been reduced by more than 50 percent  to N30,000; while the DStv Zapper decoder, dish kit plus one month Compact subscription will now be sold at N12,500 as against the previous price of N18,500.

The Director General of CPC, Mrs. Dupe Atoki, expressed optimism that compliance with these reforms would bring about a new dawn for Nigerian consumers, who would henceforth enjoy value for money in their engagement with the company.

She also asked MultiChoice to install a billing system that ensures billing starts with the provision of service. Similarly, the CPC also directed the company to, within 180 days, adopt a “technology that supports suspension of service when subscribers are otherwise unable to enjoy their service on account of being away for a limited period of time”, provided such a request for suspension of service is done for a period of between 7 to 14 days and not more than twice in a year with a 72-hour notice to MultiChoice.

On non-availability of popular channels in certain bouquets, the Council ordered the firm to within 90 days ensure “a reasonably equitable spread of popular sports and other channels hitherto concentrated in its premium bouquet over all available bouquets”.

In order to aid easy and fast access to the company by subscribers who wish to make complaints or enquiries, CPC directed MultiChoice not only to maintain local toll-free telephone access lines for its call centres, but should also ensure the call centres operate for longer hours during public holidays and weekends.