Phantom council saga: Only independent panel will unravel the culprits — Dr Baba – Ahmed

Dr Hakeem Baba-Ahmed is a veteran technocrat who retired as permanent secretary in the federal civil service. In that capacity, he earned a reputation as a disciplined administrator with strong command of government procedures, policy coordination, and the workings of the federal bureaucracy. He is now the National Chairman of the Peoples Redemption Party (PRP). In this interview, he faulted the exoneration of Femi Gbajabiamila from being complicit in the alleged establishment of a phantom agency and advised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to mandate an independent body to probe the matter and directly report to him within a week, insisting that the National Assembly, the SGF office, the CBN, among others should all be probed.

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the alleged establishment of an agency by an outsider, who also implicated the Chief of Staff to the President. As a retired permanent secretary, what is your take on this?

Although I understand that the public service is not as organised and cohesive as it was when I left it quite a long while ago, it still sounds incredible that all these stages, from the establishment of an agency to processing it through the national budget, to allowing it grow and develop to a point where it is actually engaging in activities, can happen right under the nose of the Presidency and people would say it is illegal and does not exist. I find this incredible.

What I believe is that somebody somewhere, along the line, has colluded with whoever is being suspected and there have been violations of key procedural, structural and institutional requirements to monitor and police both the integrity of the Presidency and public funds.

They said he also had an office at the Federal Secretariat. Do they rent offices there?

Well, again, it comes down to the issue of complicity. It is impossible. Let me say this again – It is impossible for a perfect stranger to walk into the Presidency, acquire offices and space within the budget, as well as funding, give himself a name, engage in activities to the point where he draws the attention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Presidency and security agencies.

Somebody has either colluded with this gentleman or dropped the ball so badly that just simply saying that this man is an impostor is not enough. We need to find out who allowed this degree of access to sensitive government institutions, processes and funding.

It is not enough to say that the man is an impostor; he had collaborators within. Who are they? We need to know.

They also said he penetrated the Central Bank of Nigeria at a time when many local government areas across the country are still unable to do so; I mean to finalise procedures of having an account with the apex bank so that they can get their funding directly in line with the Supreme Court directive.  Is it normal to open an account with the CBN, just like walking into any of the commercial banks?

There is absolutely nothing normal about this situation. What may have happened is that an individual with a very strong support within the public service – the Presidency – colluded with him to allow him access to a lot of facilities, services and access, which is very dangerous to the nation. He could have done even more damage than this with the degree to which he operated. You hear about people saying things like ‘we warned earlier on,’ but it is not enough to warn.

If there is an impostor within the service, you don’t simply warn, you take immediate, expensive steps to deal with him. I find it incredible that this man being touted as an impostor, a liar, could have had access to a huge entrance into the public service. I have never heard of this kind of thing.

What do you make of the Presidency statement on the issue, was it convincing?

No. You only get convinced here if you don’t know anything about public service. I am sorry to say that it makes mockery of the public service. You have a Head of Service, secretary to the government and a chief of staff himself, who is implicated, yet you only get the side of the government from a press statement from the spokesman of the president.

This is wrong. When you put everything about this man together, what it tells you clearly is that somebody somewhere has colluded with him. It is either he was genuine and now being disowned, or he was a criminal who had a massive contribution and collaboration with conspirators within the system and something has gone wrong. That’s the only conclusion.

When you look at the pattern of reportage, almost everybody – the media, civil society organizations, to a greater extent, not all – have focused on the man. Nothing is being said about the National Assembly, especially on how a budget line was created for his agency. Why do you think this is happening?

Let me tell you the truth, if it were a different administration and not this one, by now you would have seen key agencies, security agencies, public institutions and the National Assembly itself quickly getting together and deciding where this massive fraud, if it is a fraud, took place. How did it happen that a perfect stranger walked in and acquired this level of importance and collaboration? How did he get into the National Assembly? How did he get into the national budget? How did he get offices in the government? He even gave himself a title and was meeting with foreigners.

This is not the kind of thing you just dismiss easily simply because of a statement or two. Something has gone wrong very deeply and he is very worried that it could have done a lot more damage. We need to find out what is happening. And the Presidency is the wrong agency to absorb this stuff.

Is it okay that they have taken him to court, or something more should be done?

Taking him to court is one thing. If he has committed a crime, yes, take him to court, but there ought to be an investigation to establish exactly how this thing happened. And it should not be conducted by the same agency that appears to have done it with him.

Is it the office of the Attorney-General or the National Assembly?

The National Assembly is implicated, the Presidency is implicated; virtually everybody is implicated. If we had a good institutional system with integrity, the Office of the Secretary-General is sufficient to undertake a one-week investigation. In the old system that I am familiar with, within one week we would come up with a solid evidence of exactly what happened.

It is part of institutional failure because there’s no way you can go through all these things without the Office of the SGF getting involved.

Can you establish a nexus between what is happening now with the famous Watergate scandal in the United States?

Let’s use our own name for this. This is an unprecedented scandal. And it is a disgrace to those who are supposed to keep an eye on this – all the way from the president to the chief of staff, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, the Head of Service, the Accountant-General of the Federation to the National Assembly – everybody.

This is a complete failure. Somewhere along the line, somebody should have blown a whistle – the security agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – all these. If they had done so and were ignored until you got to this point when you have only two people speaking – the chief of staff and the spokesman of the president – it would have been different. Why can’t the president himself be addressed on this issue? Why can’t he say something about his position on this? Why do we have the same people who have failed to monitor this guy now speaking for themselves and the government? This is what is fundamentally wrong. It alarms you. There are massive gaps at the very highest echelons of government in this country.

We are not getting the kind of response we need. Where is the president? What happened? What was his role? Did he know anything at all? Did the people around him actually do all the things and got away with it?

How do you think this can be resolved?

I think that if the National Assembly has any backbone, it should insist on a thorough investigation, including its own role in this matter. The Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation should also undertake an exhaustive investigation.

Anything short of this will allow the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) or agency to do it. Anyone of these three institutions can do this.

But we saw the EFCC chairman and quite a number of diplomats meeting with the same man, and all that; what do you think?

We don’t want them to investigate him. What I am trying to say is that we need a body with sufficient integrity and competence to investigate this whole story from beginning to the end.

Are you calling for a committee to handle this matter?

Yes. But who will do that? The question is: Who will assume responsibility for this? A president who is in charge of this country should ask how many people are involved and say: ‘I am going to set up an independent commission of inquiry and give them one week to submit a report to me.’

That is integrity; that is leadership. But I am afraid; I doubt whether the president has the guts to investigate all these key sensitive organisations under him, which appear to be part of the collusion.

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