Following the cold-blooded murder of five members of the Inspector General of Police Special Intelligence Response Team, IRT, by renegade elements of the 92 Battalion of the Nigerian Army in Jalingo, Taraba State, President Muhammadu Buhari ordered investigation of the incident. The Defence Headquarters, DHQ, set up a seven-man joint investigative panel, comprising officers from the Army, Navy, Air Force, the Police, Department of State Services and the Defence Intelligence Agency under the headship of Rear Admiral. I. T. Olaiya. Their remit was to unravel the circumstances surrounding the murder of the IRT men. The Olaiya panel released its findings about a week ago without appearing to have moved the investigation any further from where pandemonium struck, leading to the back and forth between the Police and the Army, after the premeditated killing of the IRT officers on August 6. The summary of the panel’s report has an echo of General Yakubu Gowon’s reconciliatory statement at the end of the Nigerian Civil War: No victor; no vanquished.

In July 2015, Abdulrasheed Maina who was last week arrested by operatives of the Department of State Services, reportedly escaped from the country to Dubai in the United Arab Emirate. He was the Director of Human Resources in the Ministry of Interior. But it was in his capacity as Chair of the Pension Reform Task Team, now defunct, that Maina had a run-in with the law. Or so it was reported. Maina alongside Steve Oronsaye, former Head of the Civil Service of the Federation, OsarenkhoeAfe and Fredrick Hamilton, among others, were charged before a Federal High Court in Abuja on 24 counts bordering on fraud and obtaining by false pretences (is that a euphemism for 419?) to the tune of N2.1 billion in their management of the pension funds. Generally, the Nigerian Civil Service is a cesspool of fraud but perhaps this should not be surprising considering that heads of the Civil Service somehow manage to get entangled in issues of fraud and corrupt practices. It was only weeks ago that Winifred Oyo-Ita was sent on terminal administrative leave following corruption charges. As was the case with Oronsaye and the pension funds, Oyo-Ita was forced to forfeit properties and funds worth billions of naira.

This is the third straight week this column will be commenting on the arrest (properly speaking, abduction) and detention of Omoyele Sowore, the presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, in the February 2019 election, publisher of Sahara Reporters and convener of the #Revolution Now protest.

AGENTS of the Department of State Services, DSS, arrested Omoyele Sowore, presidential candidate of the African Action Congress, AAC, in the February 2019 elections and founder of Sahara Reporters, in Lagos. Sowore neither was in a bush hideout or camp training to invade Abuja or any of our cities nor was he found with arms or an invading army that could suggest he was indeed getting ready for a bloody revolution, as state prosecutors have described his call for accountability.

By Rotimi Fasan IT has been several weeks since Omoyele Sowore, a leader of the #RevolutionNow Campaign and presidential candidate of the African Action Congress was taken into detention. As matters stand, Sowore is a prisoner of conscience and is being held for nothing more than the idea he espouses. We must continue to call […]