More stunning revelations are being made about the recent changes at the National Intelligence Agency as members of the House of Representatives Committee on National Security and Intelligence on Monday received briefings from the immediate past Acting Director General, Ambassador Muhammed Dauda, who gave graphic details of what led to his sack.
A member of the committee said the former Acting DG, who was invited by the committee, met with the members behind closed doors.
Dauda was said to have disclosed that it was actually a game of intrigues, blackmail and sleazes amongst members of the Presidential Panel on the Reorganization of the NIA, under the leadership of Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, that was the crux of the matter.
The committee members, who analyzed a nine page memo submitted by Dauda on Monday, were said to have been informed that Kingibe’s panel held the NIA to a virtual ransom over the $44 million intervention fund in the vaults of the agency, by allegedly demanding for their share of the money.
A member of the committee, who craved anonymity, said part of their discoveries from Ambassador Dauda included the story of how Kingibe and the Secretary of the Panel, Abubakar Rufai Ahmed, now the Director General, had collected money in tranches only to demand for and collect $2 million from the agency’s coffers.
The former Acting Director General told the committee members that the $44 million was actually moved from the vaults of the NIA on the orders of the National Security Adviser into protective custody when it became obvious that the changes effected in the leadership of the NIA was actually targeted at siphoning the $44 million and not for any concrete reason.
While calling on the Committee members to save the jobs of the nine serving Directors of the NIA, who may have been penciled for compulsory retirement for denying members of Kingibe’s group from accessing the $44 million, Dauda also told them that besides the excessive monetary demands, the panel members instructed him to shun the NSA in his dealings.