Review… Dasuki: Choosing between rule of law, and rule of man

In from Stanley Azuakola . . .
The three weeks permission granted by the Federal High Court in Abuja for the former national security adviser, Sambo Dasuki, to travel abroad for medical treatment, will expire in two days. But the man has not even been allowed to step foot outside his house, talk more of flying on a plane. Justice Adeniyi Ademola asked the Department of State Security (DSS) to release Dasuki’s international passport on November 3, and allow him to travel, after which the trial would continue. The DSS response was instead to place him under house arrest.
Ten days after that first ruling, Dasuki went back to the court, asking it to enforce his fundamental human right. Justice Ademola could not understand why the DSS had refused to obey his order. “What is wrong in the defendant travelling and coming back to face trial?” the judge asked. “Only a fit person can stand for trial and investigation. My own order will not be flouted.” But, the judge may have been talking to the wind because over one week after that second ruling, the DSS and the federal government are still flouting the court order.
The FG’s claim that Dasuki is being investigated on other charges has been heard and dismissed by the court, which was made to believe that the FG had harmonised the money laundering and illegal possession of fire arms charges against the former NSA. The new attorney-general of the federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN), is expected to physically be in court next Monday to explain why the order of the court continues to be disregarded by a federal government that vowed to operate within the confines of the rule of law.
As public sentiment began to turn, the federal government moved to rally people behind it and divert attention from its disobedience of the court. So, late on Tuesday night, they released a statement announcing that PresidentMuhammadu Buhari had received the findings of a 13-member arms procurement investigating committee which looked into how funds which came into the Office of the National Security Adviser, Defence Headquarters, Army Headquarters, Naval Headquarters and Nigerian Air Force Headquarters, both in local and foreign currencies were spent.
The investigation was supposed to span a period of eight years, but there was no doubt that it was targeted at Dasuki. Of all the NSAs and service chiefs in the last eight years, he was the only one mentioned in the “interim report” which claimed to have unearthed several “illicit and fraudulent financial transactions.”

To be clear, there were huge sums of monies mentioned in the report that should make any honest citizen worried, considering that our soldiers kept crying over lack of weapons, arms and ammunition to take on the terrorists. If truly, these monies, of up to N2bn were stolen, then Dasuki and whoever else is involved must answer for it. There is nothing particularly likable about Dasuki who carried himself with pride and affectation in his time, and worse still, was not delivering the goods. Yet, anyone who looked at that Tuesday statement by the presidency would see that it was just a half-clever ploy to change the narrative from the FG’s flagrant disregard for the rule of law.
Why was the federal government and the presidency in such a rush to release the interim report? Why not just allow the committee to do a thorough and complete job before announcing its findings? Considering the weight of the allegations, that would have been the proper and prudent thing to do. Before such claims are made against anyone, the argument must be airtight. This sloppy investigating has been responsible for Nigeria’s failure over the years to convict a lot more public officers who defrauded the nation.
Interestingly, a day before releasing the shoddy report, President Buhari told a delegation from the Four Square Gospel church that his administration was “diligently” building up its case against those accused of stealing government funds, getting necessary evidence and facts, before formal charges are brought against them. Sadly, the arms procurement interim report felt like a bad afterthought which lacked any form of diligence.

Read also: We’ll meet in court, Dasuki tells FG

Also, why didn’t the federal government wait at least until the committee had given Dasuki the chance to defend himself against the charges before releasing the report? It is worrying that allegations like that could be made public without first observing the principle of fair hearing. Dasuki says he was not invited, but the government says he didn’t show up. Either way, why couldn’t the presidency wait a bit, so that if the court rules against Dasuki on Monday, he could make himself available before the probe committee? The FG was so blinded by its desire to change the narrative concerning its flouting of a court order that it was ready to dismiss a man’s right to fair hearing.
One of the biggest proofs of the government’s sloppiness in this case was the accusation it made in the interim report that Dasuki awarded fictitious contracts between March 2012 and March 2015, whereas the man only became NSA on June 22, 2012 and resumed for work on June 26, 2012, and so “could not have awarded any contract in whatever name” by March. Sloppy stuff due to the haste to release the unfinished report.
The former NSA has also defended himself against several of the allegations made against him. It is likely that he is telling a lie. That’s why the investigative committee should have been allowed to conclude its investigation first, after which a case is brought against Dasuki in court. The bullying and press statement prosecution by the presidency makes the government seem unserious.
It is important to reiterate that Dasuki could truly be guilty. The thing about democracy however, is that it is only the courts that can decide that – not the DSS, not the federal government, and not the enraged citizenry. If in the midst of our anger, dislike of an individual and our desire for ‘justice’, we allow the government to pick and choose which orders of the court to obey, or disobey just because we think the person deserves it, we set a bad precedence.
It will be someone else tomorrow and he may not be as hated as Dasuki. But by then the judiciary would have been too emasculated by a strong executive and an angry citizenry to fight for anyone. Ours must be about the rule of law, and not of man.

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