FG knows terror sponsors but lacks courage to prosecute— Ex-Defence Director, Olawunmi
Former Deputy Director of Defence Administration at the Defence Headquarters, Commodore Kunle Olawunmi (retd.), speaks with DANIEL AYANTOYE about the recent reported coup plot, rising insecurity, and the arraignment of Nnamdi Kanu, among other national issues
In 2001, following the attack on the NDA facility, you queried the opening of the Defence Headquarters and other military facilities across the country on Fridays for Islamic prayers. Your position then was that religion and socio-cultural issues are the problems of insecurity in Nigeria. Four years down the line, has anything changed?
I am no longer in the military circle, so I wouldn’t know if they have reduced the congregations at the Defence Headquarters and other military and paramilitary formations since I left in 2017. My interview then was really talking about my 35 years of military operations. But the big picture is that the issue of religion and socio-cultural matters has pervaded. It is very pervasive and still ongoing. So, if it has changed, I don’t think we would have the situation we have in Kwara and Benue states recently. They are getting stronger, and I think President Tinubu needs to act very quickly. What he is doing is trying to be politically correct, and terrorists don’t forgive when you make errors in trying to assuage them. You can’t negotiate with them. What he needs to do is to round up all the names that have been given to him as terrorist sponsors and try them.
You condemned negotiation with terrorists, but the likes of Sheikh Gumi and others would disagree. Recently, some northern leaders held public negotiation meetings with the terrorists wielding weapons in broad daylight. How will you describe that?
It is an aberration. You don’t negotiate with terrorists. Secondly, the event in Katsina is an indication and symptom of a failed state. If armed militias can go around on motorcycles and people can gather to discuss with them, the question we want to ask is: are they negotiating on behalf of the Federal Government? Are they negotiating on behalf of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces? We need to know. And I think Tinubu is playing with fire because if that incident happened and he has not interrogated that action, then he is playing with fire. We need to know whether the five local governments that negotiated with the bandits took permission from the state government, and if they did, we want to know whether the state governor took permission from the Federal Government. The power and security architecture of this country reside only in the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (the President). So, that incident is going to become a state practice, and eventually, Nigeria will collapse. If you continue to condone this kind of thing that I saw in Katsina, it’s going to lead to state collapse.
The Federal Government once claimed to have uncovered those financing insurgency, yet there appeared to be no concrete action afterward. Do you think these sponsors are still operating freely?
Yes, they are still doing it and getting emboldened. You mentioned somebody, look at the people like him parading themselves around. I did an interview on Arise TV and I challenged Tinubu, asking: what is he afraid of? So, somebody is not just a sponsor but also like a mentor. And you allow him to roam the streets because you’re afraid of him? What is he afraid of? Until they come to Aso Rock and flush him out of the place? You shouldn’t be afraid of them; you should take the bull by the horns. The Interpol, the DSS, and others have all this information. You can’t say, because of political correctness, you allow them to ground your country. They make your presidential tenure ungovernable, and they are warming up toward 2027 to give him the treatment they gave Goodluck Jonathan, and they are boasting about it. They are telling him to go and ask Jonathan, who was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. They are impudent to be challenging him. Some of these people should have been rounded up a long time ago. They made so much money during Buhari’s time. They basically milked the CBN dry, and they have so much money to play around with. So, for me, Tinubu should do the right thing: call all the intelligence chiefs together and give them a task, identify both the domestic and foreign sponsors of terrorism in Nigeria. The foreign elements are from some Islamic countries, while the domestic aspect has to do with our own people here. The DIA knows them. Once you round them up, try them for treason, and execute the punishment, you will see that terrorism in Nigeria will be reduced by half.
As for the foreign elements, there are procedures. I was in the DIA and was in charge of foreign liaison. You should activate that code, they can trace the money. What is the job of the CBN? What is EFCC doing? They should trace the money as it’s coming in: who is sponsoring what in Nigeria, and who are the people establishing certain financial institutions here, and for what purpose? It’s for money laundering. They establish financial institutions and use them to launder money in and out. You cannot basically query them because the CBN Act allows them to operate in the country. So, how do you trace the money when the financial instruments are already hijacked?
Why has the Federal Government found it difficult to prosecute the identified sponsors of terrorism?
The democracy that we run is such that people finance political activities. If you want to be a governor, senator, or president; you need to get a sponsor. Whatever you want to be in the political sphere, there are people who sponsor your ambition. They are not in government, but they call the shots. Unfortunately, in Nigeria, these are the people who, because of religious and economic reasons, sponsor people to power. And when you are in power, you cannot challenge them. How can you now arrest the people that actually helped you to become whatever you are in the political space? The second reason is that, when they sponsor you to be in those positions, they also sponsor another set of people who will be in certain strategic positions in the country. You can’t hold a certain ministerial appointment if you are not sponsored by the deep stakes and pushed down the throat of the president to nominate you. And if you get to the Senate, they also have their cronies there. So, these are the same people sponsoring terrorism for economic and religious reasons. When their names are mentioned, as being done, you cannot arrest them because they made you. That’s why people like me cannot aspire to be a governor or a senator, because I know how they do it.
Doesn’t that raise questions about our practice of democracy in Nigeria?
In the international sense, there’s nothing wrong with allowing people to vote for who they want. The only thing is that in Nigeria, it has become cash and carry. If you have money, then you can become a senator, governor, or anything else. Or, if you don’t have money but have a big sponsor, then you can be a minister or governor. So, is that democracy? The answer is no. I think it’s the implementation of democratic norms and practices that is wrong. It is the operators of the system that are destroying democracy. But in reality, democracy is not a bad thing.
Many have raised concerns about the decision of the Federal Government on the rehabilitation and release of some terrorists. How will you react to that?
What I discovered is that there are a lot of half-educated people in the government. They are trying to copy the United Nations Convention. If there is a rebellion and maybe there is no victory, no vanquished, or nobody won, there is what you call DDR, meaning you want to demobilise or disarm them and reintegrate them into society. So, there is that formula designed by the United Nations. What these people did was to apply it to the Boko Haram issue. We designed it for the Niger Delta militants when I did the operation for the country. It applied to the Niger Delta in a way because they had a legitimate reason for what they were doing, resource control. But these people (terrorists) that are killing people, what is their reason? Because the Niger Delta militants had a legitimate reason, a 13% derivation was introduced, a lot of other incentives were provided, and the Niger Delta states, like Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, and others that are oil-producing, are doing well today.
The issue has been minimised, and the strain on the security environment there has been manageable since that time.
The issue in the North is not the same with that of the Niger Delta. They said they should be forgiven and reintegrated. What are you forgiving them for? These are just criminals. You can’t even really call them non-state actors. These are just criminals brought in from other countries. They are not even Nigerians. So, why do you start putting them in the armed forces? What is going on? This country is going to explode maybe in the next 20 or 30 years because all the people you are reintegrating and putting into the military are going to become major generals soon. And they are going to command your army, then turn the country into an Islamic state. What they are doing is wrong, and should be stopped. They should meet this force with force because this is a terrorist action.
Were the Niger Delta militants not terrorists?
The Niger Delta militants are not terrorists. They have never been classified as terrorists. I prosecuted the Niger Delta issue, and there was no time we sat down at a security and intelligence briefing to classify them as terrorists. They were never terrorists. But these ones from the North, they are terrorists, and they have been classified as such by the President. So, you now say you are going to negotiate with terrorists and reintegrate and rehabilitate them? Those ones they rehabilitated so far have gone back to the bush. They are the ones leaking information to those in the bush to know where to strike. These are the same people ensuring that our security men are dying now. You don’t do things like that. It’s an aberration. It’s very wrong.
Would it also be wrong to have labelled Nnamdi Kanu a terrorist, given that he is agitating against the marginalisation of his region?
If I were to speak as a professional, I would say what they did to Kanu was a badly executed operation. It was poorly done. They just wanted to copy what we did to the leader of MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta), Henry Okah, during Yar’Adua’s administration. But these people are very corrupt and can be very irritating. Look at how the job was badly done during Buhari’s government. You went to Kenya to capture him and then brought him to Abuja, where you paraded him at the airport. As a professional, I followed the trend, and I saw that the people who carried out that operation were supposed to be dismissed from the army and the security services. The leader of MEND was a tougher job to handle than Kanu. We were talking about terrible, hardened people, and we got approval from Yar’Adua to go into the operation. We brought him to Nigeria, nobody knew where he came from or where we took him to until he appeared in court. But here, Kanu was brought in and placed on a chair, and people were taking pictures.
On Nnamdi Kanu issue, it’s political, and I am not a politician. I hate politics. As I said earlier, I prosecuted the MEND leader in Jos. We moved him from Abuja to Bauchi. We flew him at night to court and took him back to his detention facility without any media knowing. But that was not so in Kanu’s case. It was only when the then Attorney-General said they felt we should allow the MEND leader to go that I withdrew from the case.
Why did you withdraw from the case?
It is not yet time to talk about this country. But I don’t want to mention the SAN who was with me and knew details about this issue. Some of these people felt that it’s a political thing, and I withdrew. Now, you want to do the same thing to Nnamdi Kanu, look at what they did.
The President recently granted pardon to some convicted criminals, a decision that has generated mixed reactions. What’s your view on this?
Mr President has the prerogative of mercy. He can forgive whoever he wants and everybody can interpret it however they want. Even state governors do it. The President can release all the criminals if he wants. He may have other deeper reasons which the media may not understand. That’s the truth. You don’t understand international politics sometimes. There may be negotiations going on between the Nigerian government and certain people who say, “release our prisoners,” and he released them. But you will be shouting that they are drug dealers. You will never know what is going on behind the scenes.
