Patriots’ Forum Decries Campaign Of Calumny Against Ex-NIA DG Dauda
Loading ...The National Patriots’ Forum has decried the calculated campaign of calumny targeted at rubbishing the meritorious services of the acting Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Muhammed Dauda by some desperate elements.
In a statement by the forum’s national president Comrade Isa Tijani, and national publicity secretary Madu Musa Gwary, said the recent orchestrated calumny was executed by a publisher of an Abuja-based magazine, The Politico, Mustapha Shehu, in a publication replete with half-truths, fictions, guess work, and wild imaginations.
Here is the full statement below:
NATIONAL PATRIOTS’ FORUM
PRESS STATEMENT
Mustapha Shehu: Between Journalism and blackmail
The seeming moral puritanism by a so-called journalist and publisher of a third rated magazine, Mustapha Shehu, where he tried to paint and dramatize a scene of attempts to court his professional services in the debacle at the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, amounts to living in a glass house and yet throwing stones.
Much as it was not surprising it can be said to be bemusing, as the Mustapha Shehu we know lacks the professional and intellectual competence to offer any such services and could not have been sought after.
We have been involved from the on start and we can see through Mustapha’s lies and half-truths, wherein he tried to cast aspersions on the personalities of highly respected professionals and people of integrity, while elevating himself onto professional and moral high grounds.
For the same character who had tried to induce our National President, Comrade Isa Tijani, to back down on his fight for justice in governance, even with a promise to connect him to the incumbent Director General of the NIA, only to turn around and accuse others portrays Mustapha Shehu as a man Friday, who is the least morally qualified to preach ethics in a profession which he gate crashed.
As the first group to bring to the fore the anomalies and the attendant intrigues in the appointment of the substantive Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, Alhaji Ahmed Rufai Abubakar, it behooves on us to point out the seeming desperate antics being employed by the said Mustapha Shehu in his bid to satisfy his paymasters, even at the cost of sacrificing his professional ethics.
By his antecedents, we know that he is the type that can mortgage his conscience for a pot of porridge, having been earlier reported to have approached one of our members through his crony to offer his so-called services for a whopping N10 Million to the former Acting Director General to help plead his case before President Muhammadu Buhari who he claims to be very well connected to.
We know as a matter of fact that, Ambassador Muhammed Dauda, as a victim of injustice could not have sought for the services of Mustapha Shehu, knowing his pedigree and the fact that there is no love lost between the said Shehu and other indigenes of Shehu’s birth place, who he had always criticized. Besides, who reads Mustapha’s third-rate magazine when there are more visible media.
The Mustapha Shehu we know is not one that can resist any money offer, however small and even if comes from the devil. It is laughable that Shehu claims to have turned down money offers from the so-called representative he quotes. It is obvious that having tried in vain to reach out to the former DG which is on record, to engage him for a hatchet job, which he thrives upon, he may have gotten connected to the grand pay masters, who have been battling to cover up the scandal over Rufai Ahmed’s appointment.
Perhaps, there is need to tell Mustapha Shehu and his paymasters that Nigeria is not a jungle but a country of laws. His postulations to the effect that the former Acting DG may have approached the courts to reverse his purported sack was a ploy to manipulate the law were untenable. The Nigerian judiciary is presided over by people who have conscience, and that is why those who lack conscience themselves do not have confidence in it.
Assuming it is true, we consider it very unethical and most uncharitable for Mustapha to claim to have gotten details from either a representative of or the former Acting DG himself and publishing the source of his information. Being that he is not a professional, we can overlook that, but it is pertinent to state that, it is common knowledge that we were the group that that propped up the facts and circulated same. We challenge the self-proclaimed media saint to prove any of our claims otherwise, with attendant facts and figures.
We state without fear of contradiction that the issues of his birth, his education, his marriage to a foreigner, as well as being a serial failure and subsequent retirement as Deputy Director, his double employment and other attendant scandals were issues in the social media which we had already explained and which have not been contradicted. Mustapha Shehu merely recycled facts we have already exposed to cover up his lies and to convince his paymasters that there were indeed exclusive details to him.
For purposes of clarification, records at the Chadian birth and death registry reveals that indeed Abubakar Rufai Ahmed was born in Chad. His birth details had earlier been confirmed by the Presidency through Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu on a radio programme we monitored. The DG himself provided in his resume to the effect that he was born and bred in Chad, he schooled there and later came to Nigeria.
A poser for Mustapha Shehu about Rufai’s marital background may tend to resolve the marriage cover up. It is on record that the Dg claims to have sought and obtained permission to marry in 1993 when he was 42 years old, but was that his first marriage, coming from a society that could not have allowed him remain unmarried until he was 42? We confirm that he was indeed married to a Moroccan before the last one.
If Mustapha Shehu did indeed find out that the allegations raised were false, did he also find out that Rufai Ahmed was at a point a permanent staff of the NIA as well as the United Nations, and retired from both the same year? We had also faulted the process of vetting of the new NIA helmsman, which is a pre-requisite of the law. Mustapha Shehu may need to tell his paymasters that there is no record anywhere of Ahmed Rufai’s vetting, which covers his Chadian links.
Our findings reveal that Mustapha Shehu is acting out a double script, to justify the huge sums he ostensibly collected from his pay masters for a hatchet job, and to take out a long-standing vendetta against Ambassador Muhammadu Dauda, whose only sin was his meritorious service that lead to his progress in the NIA.
SIGNED:
Comrade Tijjani Umar, mni, National President
Madu Musa Gwary, national publicity secretary
