Mischief, a major preoccupation of the human mind, has been perfected by the word ‘government’ in Nigeria and this is manifested everyday by actions and pronouncements of government and its people.
Mischief, a major preoccupation of the human mind, has been perfected by the word ‘government’ in Nigeria and this is manifested everyday by actions and pronouncements of government and its people.
When Lawan Gwadabe decided for whatever reason, to inform President Goodluck Jonathan of his own ideas of serious national security concerns, the retired colonel thought his memo was going to be treated as a personal communication to the president.
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However, this personal letter addressed to Jonathan and which was supposed to be secret ultimately found its way through the media to the public domain.
The question is: who leaked out a personal letter supposedly addressed to President Jonathan to the public? And what was the leakage meant to achieve?
Writing a memo to the president doesn't mean the president will have to use such a memo but the real issue is the question of its leak to the media. This memo was meant to be confidential so how did it get out?
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Though the crux of this article was not on Gwadabe’s intentions, there were serious issues of credibility and sincerity on his part. If he was sure of the allegations he made against all the people he mentioned, was it not more apt for him to have given the information to the anti-corruption and security agencies to enable them prosecute the alleged culprits rather than ask president Jonathan to use extra-judicial means to truncate the presidential ambitions of his political opponents?
Gwadabe should be told in a plain language that we are in a democracy and not a military regime where the head of state can do whatever he wants without answering to anybody.
This man as an officer rose to prominence during the military administrations using similar smear campaigns and unverified allegations to destroy his colleagues and justify coups. He was caught in his mischievous schemes and properly dealt with by Al-Mustapha of the Abacha fame.
What would Gwadabe gain by advising Jonathan to move against Adenuga's business interest? Does he have a private grudge against the businessman which he now wants to settle by inciting the government against the oil magnate? Is his action not belittling the office of the president by using it to pursue a mischievous personal agenda?
If the oil wells were genuinely and legitimately acquired by Adenuga during the Obansanjo government, in whose overall interest is it for LNG to discontinue negotiation with Consolidated Oil? If Gwadabe admitted in his letter that the oil wells were without any appreciable gas reserve until only recently, it should have occurred to him that pay zones in oil exploration are not hit by political means rather through massive investment and deployment of state of the art technologies.
So what should the President do about Mike Adenuga's Oil fields, withdraw it because of the discovery of a prolific gas reserve? Mike Adenuga has been exploiting those wells since 1991, if he found Gas in Commercial quantity there in 2010 what has that got to do with Corruption allegations and why all these accusations now that the election is here?
It is interesting that Col Gwadabe, Chairman of the board of the Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) has now become the National Security Adviser to President Jonathan. Or was he lobbying for that post indirectly? If Gwadabe wants a job as the NSA or chairman of the EFCC, he should simply send his application to the president without stepping too far rather than seeking to undermine hardworking businessmen who have changed the lives of others.
Of course the truth is that the man was not writing his memo to Jonathan because he is a patriot. There is a hidden agenda here which obviously has been deflated by the leakage of the secret memo to the public.
No doubt, President Jonathan is the real benefactor of this controversial leak and it does not take a genius to guess the motive behind the release of the secret memo to the public.
Gwadabe’s memo was deliberately leaked by someone or a group in the camp of Jonathan to simply launder the image of the president as an anti-corruption leader who is here to clean the mess created by former leaders some of whom are contesting with him for the 2011 presidential ticket.
The release was to subtly but mischievously paint Jonathan as a saint and messiah, the only one that can fight and eradicate corruption in the country.
It mentioned Jonathan’s attempt to prosecute select suspects in the Halliburton bribery scandal as if it was already an accomplishment without pointing out that all the president merely attempted to do was leverage the scandal to his advantage as a corruption crusader and this terribly backfired.
Some lines in Gwadabe’s memo were clearly meant to paint some state governors as very corrupt in the eyes of their people particularly those allegedly not well inclined to President Jonathan.
In his words: “They are all corrupt yet they are scared stiff of being investigated. Investigated they must be, because that is what the President owes the Nigerian people who are short-changed.
“Already the governors have dispatched their foot soldiers particularly in the north to brainwash the common people about power coming back to the North. They will use money to settle delegates. Monies that, they should have used to promote the development of their people.
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