Col. Sambo Dasuki And The Irony Of History

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Irony kills. Often, it does so in the most unexpected dimensions. And at such moments, the tremours generated ensure that great men are almost reduced to the status of mere mortals. As an officer in the Nigerian Army, Major Sambo Dasuki was destined for the top of his chosen profession.

He was not just a Fulani, but hailed from Sokoto, the seat of the famous Caliphate founded by Uthman Dan Fodio, his direct fore-bearer, a legendary Islamic scholar, renowned 19th century Jihadist, northern irredentist and Hausa-Fulani expansionist extraordinary.

Major Sambo Dasuki was not just a Brahmin from Sokoto, but he was very high born, and hails from one of the ruling houses privileged to produce a Sultan, the most pre-eminent traditional stool in Nigeria. The throne of the sultanate is not directly hereditary. The ladder to this haven of luxurious traditional rulership is a conjugal fraternity among Dan Fodio’s male heirs. In these well known sultanate families, the privileged scions mount certain traditional stages before ascending the throne.

When the Evil Genius, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida overran Dodan Barracks, then the seat of power in August 1985, Major Dasuki became his Chief Security Officer, CSO. And Alhaji Ibrahim Dasuki, the once famous, wealthy and influential father of the swashbuckling major eventually became the Sultan of Sokoto.

General Babangida’s junta had as Chief of Army Staff, General Sanni Abacha, a goggled Gypsy of Kanuri extraction from Kano. Later, the Evil Genius released millions of naira for the rehabilitation of army barracks across the nation to General Abacha, but Major Dasuki observed that no army barrack received a touch of paint and the millions earmarked for them were never returned to army pay office. Incensed, he fired off a scathing indictment of General Abacha to General Babangida, but as first among equals, he could not morally reprimand, talk less of punishing the man who was to all intents and purposes, his second in command.

The effrontery of Major Dasuki almost cost him his life by a vengeful General Abacha, but General Babangida spirited him away to the United States of America for further studies. The temerity and defiance of the major ignored the cozy “army arrangement” {apologies to Fela} between the Evil Genius and his co-travellers to “chop and clean mouth.” In great fury, General Abacha resolved to teach the impudent Major Dasuki a major lesson in seniority. Meanwhile, the Gypsy advanced in the armed forces to become the Chief of Defence Staff and in 1994, he emerged as the head of state when he easily collapsed the contraption called Interim National Government {government that sat on one buttock} that General Babangida put in place to beguile Nigerians after the June 12 debacle. More significantly, events later revealed that Abacha also became the “governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria!” By the time he infamously stepped aside in 1999 after a supposed “apple” death on the laps of some Indian Delilahs, the Gypsy’s itchy fingers had left the nation much poorer by billions of dollars. The term “Abacha loot” still being repatriated from many western countries is a testimony of his wholesale evacuation of the national treasury!

In 2013, retired Colonel Sambo Dasuki was appointed by ex-president Goodluck Jonathan, GCFR, as the National Security Adviser, NSA. Late 2015, the government of President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, arrested this Sokoto prince as being in the heat of the princely sum of $2.1 billion meant for defence procurement that somehow went into voice mail. As far as the APC administration is concerned, Col Dasuki ran a Father Xmas party with the money. They accuse him of organizing a bazaar of goodluck that saw the money meant for the armed forces being handed out to political pimps, pot-bellied media owners, PDP patriarchs, playboys and acolytes, compromised senior members of the armed forces and their wives and children.

Laughably, what he accused the Gypsy of is now tied to his well fed neck. After the Gypsy, Colonel Sambo Dasuki may be the most vilified public official in Nigeria, but that is in the future. For the present, the beleaguered colonel remains in the clutches of President Buhari and his EFCC. They have refused to obey a court order that granted him bail on very expensive conditions. Colonel Dasuki, I dare say, may yet make the throne of the caliphate if the courts discharge and acquit him of the charges of unlawful possession of firearms, breach of trust and money laundering that the EFCC is trying to persuade a Federal High Court judge to believe.

Pastor, historian, and writer, Joseph Emeka Anumboris the author of THE INTERCOURSE OF TROUBLED THOUGHTS, a critically acclaimed discourse on homosexuality published by AuthorHouse Inc, Indiana, USA.

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Articles by Emeka Anumbor