Talk about the hunted turning around to become the hunter. Back in August 2020, former Central Bank Deputy Governor Dr. Obed Mailafia [now deceased] sensationally said during a live Nigeria Info radio interview, “Let me make some revelations because some of us have our internal security networks. We have met with some of the bandits’ High Commanders who have repented, and they told us that one of the Northern Governors is the Commander of Boko Haram in Nigeria.” The interviewer asked him whether the “Northern governor” in question was a former one or a sitting one, and Mailafia said, “Sitting.”
Though Mailafia did not mention any name, most people believed at the time that his alleged Boko Haram sponsor was then Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufa’i. Why because, the governor had made a controversial statement some time earlier, saying he paid some foreign herdsmen not to mount reprisal attacks to avenge for their rustled cattle. Of course Mailafia’s claim as thoroughly discredited because when DSS arrested him and brought him before newsmen in Jos, he said he picked up the information from Fulani women who sell sour milk [nono] when he went to the market to buy acca. So much for his intelligence networks.
Now, Nasiru el-Rufa’i has borrowed a leaf from his former accuser and made a similarly, or perhaps even more sensational claim. He said in an Arise TV interview that his former friend, National Security Adviser Nuhu Ribadu, was the one who ordered his arrest at the airport because someone bugged the NSA’s phone and heard him giving the order. Isn’t that illegal? the interviewer asked him. He however justified it by saying the government, too, illegally bugs citizens’ phones.
How very sensational. Neither the CIA nor the KGB ever admit that they bug people’s phones. Now the former governor has been dragged to court for bugging the NSA’s phone. Before that one could be resolved, he added the even more dangerous claim that NSA Ribadu imported thallium sulphate, an extremely dangerous poison that is colourless and odourless. He even wrote to the NSA at the weekend and asked for information about the “import.”
During his days as FCT Minister in the Obasanjo Presidency, his colleagues called el-Rufa’i “suicide bomber” because of reckless executive actions. In all likelihood, his claim of bugging NSA’s phone is no better than Mailafia’s claim that he had his own intelligence network. For a man who believes the government is desperately looking for an excuse to throw him in the slammer, this looks very much like a political suicide bombing mission.
