By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Kunle Olawunmi, former intelligence top notch who exposed Muhammadu Buhari’s hypocrisy about Islamist terrorists on Channels Television on August 25, has been invited to the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) on Tuesday for questioning.
The DIA invited him via a text message on August 28 but after SaharaReporters broke the story, the spy agency scrambled to put a gloss on it, saying the former Navy Commodore would only be asked to provide intelligence to fight jihadists.
Olawunmi is a respected professor of global security studies who served in military intelligence for 35 years, and by his account on national television, there is nothing he knows about national security which all the spy agencies do not already know.
If invitation is not arrest, is it a gag?
Defence Headquarters (DHQ) Information Director, Major General Benjamin Sawyerr, said the invitation does not amount to arrest.
“The intelligence community is like a family, somebody from the DIA watching the senior officer talk and now called him. ‘Oga if you have such information it will be good you share it with the DIA.
“Please, can you come on Tuesday and share with us so that it will assist security agencies to tackle the problem on time.’ Does that constitute a warrant of arrest? The invitation is not an arrest,” Sawyerr said, reported by Leadership.
A statement issued by Sawyerr, reported by Premium Times, said DIA only sent an SMS to Olawunmi, inviting him to shed more light on some of the information he has which may aid the fight against insecurity.
“The attention of the Defence Headquarters (DHQ) has been drawn to an online news publication by Sahara Reporters alleging that the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) ordered the arrest of retired Cdre Kunle Olawunmi for recently appearing on Channels Television programme (Sunrise Daily),” the statement said.
“The Armed Forces may not want to join issues with Sahara Reporters for the scandalous and malicious publication insinuating that it’s Agency has ordered the arrest of Cdre Olawunmi (rtd) for sharing his views on matters of defence and national security.
“It is gratifying to state that the retired military officer, who is on the military reserve list, was only invited via SMS and voice by DIA to further furnish the AFN with relevant and pressing security information which he may be opportune to have knowledge of as a Professor of Global Security Studies.
“The said proposed meeting between DIA and [Olawunmi] was intended to get credible tips on boosting the fight against terrorism/insurgency, banditry and sundry crimes. He was not asked to come along with his international passport. This in no way constitute any form of arrest speculated by Sahara Reporters.
“It is very sad that an online media like Sahara Reporters would capitalize on a proposed meeting between an agency and it’s stakeholder to paint the story in a manner intended to portray the military as draconic government agency acting in a crude manner.
“In this regard, I wish to use this medium to encourage [Olawunmi] to come forward to give valuable information to the military authorities as a patriotic citizen who has served meritoriously in [the] Nigerian Navy in various capacities before retirement.”
Olawunmi says DHQ already knows terrorists and their sponsors
Olawunmi insisted in the explosive interview that both the DHQ and all other arms of the national security apparatus already know all those behind the terror in Nigeria.
“We are currently in the worst security situation in Nigeria today, some governors, ministers and Senators are sponsors of Boko Haram and the government knows them,” he told Channels Television.
He said Bureau De Change (BDC) operators, most of whom are Northerners, are also sponsors of Boko Haram known to the Buhari regime and its agencies.
“Another security breach is that every Friday, NDA [Nigerian Defence Academy, Kaduna] and all government institutions are opened for Jumaat prayers. They come on Friday for worship.
“Later they become members of the mess who will later spy on the institution and plan their attack.”
He said there must be insider collaborators in NDA because there are a lot of irresponsible people in Nigerian military formations.
“In a few hours the people that attacked NDA will be apprehended, but that’s not the solution. This government does not want to resolve this problem, rather they are escalating it.”
In Olawunmi’s view, the solution to insecurity is not kinetic.
“You identify the centre of gravity, which had been identified. The centre of gravity is the sponsors of Boko Haram and bandits, most of these sponsors are known within the intelligence community.
“The DMI [Department of Military Intelligence], DSS [Department of State Security] and police intelligence know the sponsors very well, the DSS knows very well with tonnes of files of those sponsoring evil in this country.
“Defence Headquarters also knows all those who are behind the terror going on in Nigeria.”
A messenger Buhari can’t rubbish
Olawunmi’s disclosures are a bombshell nobody can refute, deny, or rubbish.
Neither Buhari nor his lying ministers and vicious media aides can fault Olawunmi’s claims or – as is their usual tactics – attack his person as they do others who speak truth to power, such as Olusegun Obasanjo, Wole Soyinka, Matthew Kukah, et al.
Buhari, as usual, is only trying to bully and intimidate Olawunmi, the way Buhari flagrantly abuses the power of his office by speaking through his aides to browbeat Benue State Governor Samuel Ortom for speaking out against Fulani terrorists.
Buhari has a public record of failing to deal with facts and truth, preferring instead to attack the messenger. Meanwhile, problems highlighted, many of them created by his own incompetence and deliberate unforced errors, remain unsolved.
Every problem Buhari refuses to solve multiplies in itself and also produces collateral problems. Then he goes around in circles, pretending to be busy, but looking for who to insult through his aides while pursuing his Fulani supremacism.
Most Nigerians already know that Buhari and many of his ministers and aides provide moral and financial support for Islamist Fulani terrorists who seek to dominate and Islamise and impoverish Southern Nigeria as they have the North.
But the bombshell patriotic Olawunmi delivered live on national television helps to expand and deepen knowledge already in the public domain.
Below are more excerpts of his explosive disclosures:
Terrorist attack on NDA
“It is an aberration; you don’t attack the Nigerian Defence Academy and get away with it. In 2017, I carried out an investigation by the minister of defence that wanted me to check what was going on with the training and the security there [NDA].
“Why should a government decide to cause this kind of embarrassment and insecurity to the sense of what happened yesterday [Tuesday August 25] at the NDA?”
“I remember I spent about a week in the NDA with the commandant and the staff but something struck me: every Friday, the gate of NDA is thrown open and everybody has access to pray in the mosque.
“On Fridays, you are going to see the same thing happening across all military formations in the country .… If you go to Defence Headquarters, I served at the Defence Headquarters as the Deputy Director, Defence Administration between 2015 and 2017.
“Throughout my two years at Defence Headquarters, I received visitors twice because of the strict security architecture there but every Friday, the gate of the Defence Headquarters is thrown wide open for everybody to come in and observe Jumat.
“That is the time the terrorists profile our security environment. It has always been the case.
“I have served the military intelligence for the past 35 years. Our problem is religion and socio-cultural.”
Buhari knows Boko Haram sponsors
“I told General [Abayomi] Olonisakin [then Chief of Defence State now retired] that the centre of this problem cannot be solved the same way we solved the problem of the Niger Delta.
“The Niger Delta problem was solved during [former President Umaru] Yar’adua basically by me and I told them that we can’t use that same template for Boko Haram. I told General Olonisakin to look at the centre of gravity of the problem.
“I was made a member of the committee in 2016-2017 including [the Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim] Attahiru that died. I told them that the centre of gravity of Boko Haram in Nigeria is the sponsors of the programme.
“It was beyond us because the job we needed to do was kinetic but we cannot resolve issues of sponsors of Boko Haram that were in Buhari’s government that we know them.
“That was why we couldn’t pursue that aspect that could have resolved the issue because we need to arrest people.”
Buhari refuses to prosecute terrorists, engages in a ‘charade’
“You remember this Boko Haram issue started in 2012 and I was in the military intelligence at that time. We arrested those people. My organisation actually conducted interrogation and they (suspects) mentioned names.
“I can’t come on air and start mentioning names of people that are presently in government that I know that the boys that we arrested mentioned. Some of them are governors now, some of them are in the Senate, some of them are in Aso Rock.
“In April this year, the government said they had arrested 400 Bureau De Change (BDCs)-related people that were sponsoring Boko Haram. They told us.
“Why is it that the Buhari government has refused to try them? Why can’t this government bring them to trial if not that they are partisan and part of the charade that is going on?”