By Chuks Okagbue

ON Wednesday January 10, 2018,
President Muhammed Buhari appointed Mr. Ahmed Abubakar as the substantive Director General, DG, of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA. His appointment came via a statement issued by the Senior Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Femi Adesina.

By that announcement, Mr.Abubakar replaced the embattled former DG of the agency, Mr. Ayo Oke, under whose watch tons of cash in foreign currency were found in an apartment in Ikoyi, Lagos linked to the agency.

President Muhammadu Buhari

Soon after Mr. Abubakar’s appointment was made public, the social media became instantly awash with commentaries on him. They ranged from the benevolent to the bizarre. This is that emerging culture that is increasingly shaping our society largely negatively and threatening to do it in. Sadly, some of the country’s mainstream media platforms have become part of the trend, going to town with half truths and other things that were at their best unfounded.

In their comments, some people had averred that the new appointee had bowed out from the employment of NIA as an Assistant Director, after failing promotion examinations on two occasions, a claim that was wholly and entirely baseless. Some even went all the way to claim that he is a citizen of Chad, carrying that country’s passport as a national. Not done yet, some went on to suggest that he was married to a Moroccan wife. But everyone who knows Mr. Abubakar like the back of his palm will definitely find that most amusing.

Among other things, some people’s reason for playing such wild card was that it was inimical for anyone occupying Mr.Abubakar’s type of sensitive office to have a foreigner as a wife. Unfortunately, those who have been curiously and ruthlessly committed to bringing him down – as many as they are – have not taken their feet off the throttle pedal.

Ordinarily, an appointment to the office of DG of NIA is a strategic one. That everyone knows. It is one of the many of such sensitive positions whose occupants need to be carefully scrutinised. There is no argument about it. And so, any constructive effort at putting the occupant on the spot is a patriotic duty.
Be that as it may, one could have gone ahead to neglect some of those malicious defamatory and libellous commentaries and outright innuendos against the person of Mr. Abubakar. But not really in this case! Nevertheless, one is obliged to forgive those who have latched on the fake information wafting from the social media and believing them to be true.

A quick reminder here that Mr. Abubakar, until his recent appointment as the new NIA DG, was the Senior Special Assistant to the President, SSAP, on Foreign Affairs/International Relations. Before that appointment, he was the Senior Adviser at the Multinational Joint Task Force, MNJTF, with headquarters in Ndjamena, Chad, a regional initiative/coalition of countries in the Lake Chad region put together to combat Boko Haram insurgency and other trans-border security threats in the region. Earlier, he had had such huge experiences working with the United Nations, UN, in various peace keeping operations, with their attendant commitments to promoting good governance, peace, mutual co-existence, rule of law and human rights in far flung lands.  Mr. Abubakar holds these impressive academic credentials that many may not ignore. Here is a man who has a Diplôma certificate in French language Literature and Civilisation and went on to earn a B.A degree in French language and Literature, topping it up with an M.A degree in Francophone Maghrebian Literature, all from Bayero University, Kano. Between when he started out and now, he had attended various trainings overseas which fortified him for the ardours tasks ahead of him. He is a multi linguist who has functional knowledge of English, French, Hausa and Arabic languages.

Contrary to what people have been circulating in the social media about Mr. Abubakar’s nationality, it needs to be said that the gentle man hails from Katsina State. Those ignorantly vilifying him should be pardoned because at some point, his parents had cause to relocate to Chad. And so, he had his primary education in Ndjamena, the Chadian capital. He also lived a part of his life there but later returned to Nigeria to continue with this secondary and tertiary education in Katsina.
And what else does one need to say? The new NIA DG is a committed family man, married to one wife who is from Katsina State and not Morocco as many have insinuated. In fact, both of them hail from the same community in the state. That is why many who know Mr. Abubakar and his wife will find this particular damaging allegation that his wife is a Moroccan funny. For this is one of such attempts at bringing down a good man. And here is a challenge to anyone who has anything contrary to this submission to endeavour to bring it on.

In all its ramifications, the new DG NIA can be described as a professional who knows his onions. The Abubakar most people know had a stint in the academia, having started out as a graduate assistant at Bayero University, Kano, rising to the position of assistant lecturer in the Department of English and European Languages.
By 1988, Mr. Abubakar had become a senior political affairs officer in Katsina State government rising in 1990 to the position of Principal Political Affairs Officer/Ag Director, in the Department of Political Affairs, in Governor’s Office. Then shortly after, he transferred his services to the federal level assuming office as a Foreign Service Officer. When the opportunity came for him to break into the diplomatic service, he seized it with both hands. Shortly after, he became the Senior Political Affairs Officer/Head of Political Affairs Department in the African Union Mission in Sudan, (AMIS, Khartoum, Sudan. And from there, he had been on the ascendancy, garnering immense diplomatic skills that have come to prepare him for intense diplomatic roles. That is his trajectory.

Over the past years, Mr. Abubakar’s has been actively involved in high-level Ad hoc duties in Africa, doing quick review missions and providing various diplomatic services for the African Union and progressively worked with the AU-UN Joint Mediation Support Team in Doha, Qatar. It was his diplomatic know-how and political advisory savvy that caught the attention of President Buhari who invited him over and quickly appointed him his SSA on Foreign Affair/International Relations. Having distinguished himself in that capacity, over the past two years, Mr. President had singled him out as a round peg in a round hole capable of providing the deliverables at the NIA. Indeed, Mr. Abubakar deserves a chance to prove himself.
All he deserves, therefore, is the full support of all Nigerians to succeed.