Since the allegation that he forged his certificates hit the public domain, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Alhaji Abdullahi Inde Dikko, has become nervous. Like a drowning man grabbing every available reed at the river bank in order not to be swallowed by the waves, the big man has adopted series of stratagems so that the Umaru Yar’Adua government will not investigate the matter. His desperate efforts range from harassment of the whistle blower, intimidation of the media, litigation, supplications to Mike Aondoakaa, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice and sending cabinet ministers to one of the lawyers involved in the case to advertorials dripping with twisted logic.
Trouble started for Dikko when the rapport between him and his alleged accomplice in certificate counterfeiting, Ibrahim Oyewole Olajide, broke down. Threatened, arrested, and detained, a frightened Olajide was compelled to open his mouth wide to his lawyer, Festus Keyamo and what he and Dikko planned and executed in secret became a matter for the market place.
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Olajide swore to an affidavit at the High Court of Lagos State on 1 September 2009 that he knew Dikko since 1995, while he (Olajide) was undergoing the compulsory National Youth Service Corps, NYSC, scheme with the Nigerian Institute of Management, NIM (as the officer in charge of Training and Courses Department), on Plot 22, Idowu Taylor Street, Victoria Island, Lagos. The same year, the Customs boss was serving as a Superintendent of Customs and had his official quarters at Block 18, Flat ‘F’, Eric Moore Towers, Surulere, Lagos. Dikko allegedly approached Olajide to, as contained in the affidavit, "sneak out blank programme certificates on Finance and Accounts for him, which he intended to fill himself and present as authentic certificates and that he needed these certificates and many others to get rapid promotion".
The young man, in his words, obliged Dikko and secured on his behalf the 1995 and 1996 course participant certificates which the Customs boss allegedly filled "himself and forged the signatures on them". When Olajide completed his national service the following year, he revealed that his name was withdrawn from the list of corps members to be considered for employment because the Institute discovered these missing certificates from the booklet of certificates in his custody. Worse still, he could not account for them "for fear of implicating Dikko". With this development, the mischievous saying that "Now Your Suffering Continues, NYSC" held true for Olajide. As he could not be retained, he told Dikko of his predicament, "but he promised me he would get me into Dangote Group at that time through one of his friends, Alhaji Idris Shuaib Mikati. But in the meantime, I became an errand boy for him. This situation of running errands for him continued for years and I later forgot about getting a regular employment".
Having completed the first leg of his assignment, Dikko played Oliver Twist when, in 1999, he allegedly confessed to the young man that his West African Examination Certificate, WAEC, result was defective and, as the accomplice said, "implored me to assist him get another result". Olajide was emphatic in what he did: "In that same year i.e. 1999, I assisted Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko through the help of a staff of WAEC, to get him a fake WAEC result bearing the name of Government College, Kaduna and with the date of issuance as 1980".
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The third leg of his job for Dikko happened this way, according to Olajide. In the year 2000, when the Customs big man wanted to become a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, ICAN, they discovered that the WAEC result he presented was fake, a copy of which he had already submitted to the Customs authorities where it was difficult to withdraw.
When he hit a brickwall, Dikko decided to change to gear three by abandoning his ambition of becoming a fellow of ICAN and opting for the Association of National Accountants, ANAN, situated at Herbert Macaulay Way, Yaba, Lagos. "With the assistance of two members of staff of ANAN, one Mr. Bello who was then in charge of examinations and one Mr. Ojelade in charge of registration at the Institute, Alhaji Dikko was admitted as a fellow of ANAN," Olajide swore. But rather than go for outright forgery, Bello allegedly suggested that somebody should write the ANAN examination on behalf of Dikko.
Therefore, as Olajide said, "that suggestion warranted my contracting one Mr. Ganiu Memudu to write the ANAN examination on behalf of Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko." Although Memudu was reluctant, he played ball after much pressure from the two and wrote the ANAN examination sometime in March 2000 at the auditorium of the University of Lagos.
Then sometime in 2005 when Dikko was promoted to the rank of Comptroller of Customs in charge of Investigations, Olajide approached him through his wife, Hajia Shadiat Abdullahi, for assistance in securing a job. But her response, as the young man explained, was that "I was trying to reveal the confidentialities between myself and her husband, Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko, adding that Yoruba men could not be trusted. That response made me to leave their residence on the said date."
That was the turning point in their relationship. In one of Dikko’s desperate moves to suppress the scandal, Olajide claimed that sometime in February 2006, on arriving from a religious vigil with his wife, he was informed by his landlady that some persons came in a Toyota Corolla car looking for him with the aim of offering him a job as a clearing agent at the ports. "My landlady added that she suspected foul play since only two persons alighted from the said Toyota Corolla car while the others sat back," Olajide maintained.
This information scared the daylight out of him, especially when the men did not leave any contact address or phone numbers behind. Olajide had to relocate his wife and kids. He, thereafter, met one retired Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr. E.O. Abai, who promised to plead with Dikko, who, as the young man said, vowed "to deal with me and added that I might be killed any moment from then". Abai, therefore, advised Olajide to enforce his rights in a law court, a step which he took on 24 April 2006 at a Lagos High Court sitting in Igbosere. The court granted his prayer that he should not be intimidated or harassed by Dikko nor any of his agents.
Notwithstanding this injunction, Dikko’s desperation in turning Olajide into jelly continued on 21 November 2006, when he was arrested by police officers from Panti Police Station, based on a petition written by one Superintendent of Customs, Mohammed Lawal, alleging that, as the victim deposed to in the affidavit, "I collected the sum of two million, one hundred thousand naira (N2,100,000.00) from him to settle the case between me and Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko". He was detained for two weeks in Panti and arraigned before an Ebute-Metta Magistrate’s Court for stealing. But the court struck out the case.
This did not deter Dikko in his resolve to cut the young man to size. On 12 January 2007, during the hearing of the criminal matter, he was picked up at the premises of the Magistrate’s Court by police officers from the Abuja Police Command, based on a petition written again by Dikko alleging that some documents, money and computers belonging to him were stolen from his Abuja residence on 4 November 2004 and that Olajide might be responsible.
He was, therefore, detained for 40 days at Apo Legislative Quarters and, as Olajide alleged, the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mohammed Ladan–who was in charge of the matter–thereafter "told me that the only condition for my release was for me to withdraw the Fundamental Rights suit I filed against Dikko". On 20 February 2007, Abai, who had helped him earlier, came to Abuja to see the then Inspector-General of Police, Mr. Sunday Ehindero, to secure the young man’s release. Olajide was, on 22 February 2007, asked to see Ladan, who took him to the High Court, Abuja, which did not sit, a development which stalled the former’s arraignment. This created an opportunity for him and his wife to meet Ehindero who instructed his Principal Staff Officer, PSO, Mr. Solomon Arase, to look into the matter. That, as Olajide stated, led to the invitation of all the police officers involved in the matter and "after asking some pertinent questions, like whether Alhaji Dikko originally reported any case of robbery to any police station (the answer being negative) and having satisfied himself that the allegation was frivolous, he (Ehindero) ordered my release and further advised me not to go about threatening Alhaji Dikko about his past, and that he was sure that Alhaji Dikko would leave me alone on that note". With this truce, Olajide happily returned to Lagos where, to his surprise, one Inspector Habilla, a family friend of Dikko and two other Customs Officers, Messrs Enemoh and Mohammed Lawal, continued to trail him. Olajide reported this incident to Mr. Arase, the PSO to Ehindero, who promised that all would be settled.
Instead of this, Dikko, with nose-thumping determination, continued the harassment. Olajide was declared wanted (in the Punch and Tribune of 28 April 2008) by the Abuja Police Command in connection with robbery. "It was at that point I realised that the plan was to arrest me as an armed robber and either shoot me like the Boko Haram leader or keep me perpetually remanded in prison custody as a robber awaiting trial," he lamented. The whistle blower, therefore, went underground.
Dikko’s desperation did not end there. When Abai took Olajide to Abuja (with the newspaper publication) on 7 August 2009, they met with the Commissioner of Police, Abuja, Mr. John Haruna, who said he knew nothing about the publication. Haruna summoned the command’s spokesman, Superintendent of Police, Mr. Jimoh, for explanation. "The Abuja Police Command’s spokesman further contacted the I.P.O supposedly handling the matter, one Mr. Danjuma Attah, who confirmed that the case has no case file and that I should go in peace," Olajide said.
A week after this, Dikko was named as the Comptroller-General of Customs. At this stage, his desperation over the young man took a savage twist. The same Jimoh, who said he knew nothing about the case called Abai to, according to Olajide, "notify me that I should come to the Abuja Police Command, that there is now a case file against me which has been sent to court in respect of a charge of armed robbery". While all these were going on, Olajide’s mother collapsed and died. She had heard that her son was arrested at the premises of a Magistrate’s Court in Lagos and taken to Abuja in handcuffs. "Similarly, owing to lack of adequate parental care, I lost my four-year-old son to an illness," the man complained. He added that because of the development, he could not walk freely nor seek employment or business opportunities for fear of being identified as an armed robber, a situation that has left his wife as the only bread winner of the family. As all these became unbearable, he contacted Keyamo to defend him. The lawyer threw the matter (contained in a petition to Yar’Adua) to the media. In desperation again, Dikko resorted to gutter tactics against newspapers or magazines that dared to report the issue. Here is how.
PM News, TheNEWS’ sister publication, came out smoking with a headline, "New Customs Boss Forges All Certificates" on 3 September 2009. According to the evening newspaper, "The new Comptroller-General of Customs, Alhaji Abdullahi Inde Dikko, is enmeshed in a big certificate scandal. He has been accused of forging all his academic certificates." The newspaper, before that, had published a story on 25 October 2007, entitled "Businessman Drags Customs Chief to Court". It reported: "A Lagos businessman, Ibrahim Olajide, who alleged that a senior Customs officer who was formerly the Comptroller of Investigation, Alhaji Abdulahi Inde Dikko, is out to kill him because of certain secret he knew about the Customs officer, has renewed his legal battle against the officer. Counsel to the claimant, Barrister Ebun Olu Adegboruwa, had written a letter to the Chief Judge, Administration, to reassign the case to another judge due to recent redeployment of Lagos High Court judges, while also asking for accelerated hearing of the case."
But Chuks Nwana, Dikko’s counsel, fired a letter, dated 29 October 2007, to TheNEWS management, alleging that Olajide made several vain attempts to blackmail Dikko. Dikko shifted from epistolary style to rejoinder, dripping with illogicalities and threat of lawsuit. On page 63 of ThisDay of 4 September 2009, Chuks Nwanah & Co, a firm of legal practioners, acting on Dikko’s behalf, published a rejoinder, entitled "Alhaji Abdulahi Inde Dikko: A Refutal Of P.M.News Front Page News Publication Of Thursday September 3, 2009."
The lawyers claimed that there was no truth whatsoever in the allegation contained in the publication and the supporting affidavit sworn to by Olajide; the entire subject matter of the publication is subjudice in suit No. M/133/2006 before the Lagos High Court that was coming up on 14 September 2009; the present publication is the fourth in the series of orchestrated attempts to blackmail and extort money from our client; the deponent is presently standing trial before Justice Ishaq Bello of the Abuja High Court and a bench warrant had been issued against him on different counts of stealing and illegal possession of documents belonging to Alhaji I. Dikko and that Olajide was subsequently declared wanted by the police.
They added that it is lamentable that some despicable characters had laid low until the recent elevation of Alhaji Dikko to the leadership of the Nigeria Customs Service. The counsel essentially saw the publication as an attempt by some Fifth Columnists, disgruntled elements and some entrenched interests to distract the Comptroller-General from the aggressive pursuit of his reform-focused Six-Point Agenda for the Customs Service.
Then Dikko’s lawyers rammed in their threat by giving the management of P.M.News publication "the next 48 hours to retract the offending publication with an apology or face heavy claims for the libellous publications". The lawyers reiterated that the qualifications of Dikko are all genuine, none is a forgery as alleged in the publication and "were all obtained from very reputable institutions and organisations within and outside Nigeria". They maintained further that Dikko did not, at any point, threaten or harass anyone, particularly Olajide, and that, having put in over two decades in the service of the country "he had conducted himself with dignity and honour in the discharge of his duties".
Then, Premier, a Lagos-based weekly, published a cover on 8 September 2009, entitled, "Dikkogate: How New Customs Boss Forged His Way to the Top". On 11 September 2009, Dikko ordered the seizure of 2,000 copies of the edition. The raid, as Keyamo said, took place near Customs headquarters in Zone 3, Abuja while the tabloid’s agent, Mr. Oluwatosin Testimony, was arrested by Customs officers on the orders of Dikko and taken to the Customs Security Post at Zone 3 Headquarters where he was detained for hours. The seized copies were later burnt. Keyamo argued: "The story that Alhaji Dikko is so desperate to kill is the allegation by his former boy, Mr. Olajide Oyewole Ibrahim, that almost all the certificates of the Customs boss were forged for him by the boy. Instead of Alhaji Dikko to respond by publishing his certificates (if he has one at all), he has resorted to this stone-age tactics. If Dikko feels that a crime has been committed by the vendors circulating newspapers containing a story on him, he can report to the Nigeria Police, but cannot resort to self help to vent his spleen." The lawyer wanted Yar’Adua to save the Customs Service and Nigerians this national embarrassment by ordering the immediate probe of these grave allegations and not to continue to play the ostrich on the matter.
While newspapers and magazines have been reporting the issue in public space, Saharareporters has been doing same on cyberspace, a disposition that made Dikko’s men to approach him to soft-pedal. On 11 September, it came out with "Certificate Scandal Latest: Customs Boss Dikko Goes Beserk, Burns Newspapers." Sahara, apart from reporting the seizure of Premier, demanded disclosure, because when it requested Dikko to send copies of his certificates for verification with the institutions he claimed to have attended, "instead, he sent a bunch of names, email addresses and mobile phone numbers of persons who can attest to his sojourn in Bulgaria, where he had claimed he received a Masters degree in Economics in 1985".
For this and more reports that the on-line medium did on the matter, Dikko did not know what to do to it or the man behind it. This is because Nigeria, apart from the different time zones, is separated from the Western country where Omoyele Sowore, the brain behind the website, operates from, by the dizzying expanse of the Atlantic. Dikko, therefore, adopted to placate Sahara with advertisement patronage so that, with this corporate support, the medium or its owner would look the other way or, as some media veterans would say, travel to Afghanistan.
Sowore told TheNEWS: "Yes, Dikko sent a group that claimed they wanted to place adverts congratulating him on his appointment on our website. We rejected it outright because as a rule, we don’t take adverts that congratulate people and most importantly, government officials."
When Dikko ran into a cul-de-sac there, he fished out another trick. Dorothy Bassey of Chuks Nwana and Co rushed to the High Court of Lagos on 10 September 2009, seeking an order, on behalf of the Customs boss, restraining Olajide "either by himself through his agents, privies or relatives from publishing in any media house or the Internet the proceedings in this suit without leave of court". She added that Olajide and his lawyers had embarked on a media campaign "to smear and tarnish the image of the defendant (Dikko)", a development that could, according to her, render the present proceedings in court an academic exercise. She supported her position with a 15-point affidavit. But the court is yet to grant the application. The desperation of Dikko and his foot soldiers also included a subterranean approach to Keyamo to play it cool. TheNEWS gathered that three past Comptrollers-General of Customs and two serving ministers in the Yar’Adua government had been pilling pressure on the fiery lawyer. Moreover, this magazine was reliably informed that part of Dikko’s knee-jerk response to the scandal is that his people had met with Aondoakaa to withdraw the criminal charge, to placate Olajide.
Another instance of the desperation of Dikko and his spin doctors was that, recently, his lawyer said on African Independent Television, AIT, that Oladimeji had started begging the Customs boss for forgiveness. When TheNEWS contacted Keyamo, he waved it off as "one of the desperate lies of Dikko and his men to confuse the public".
In a bid to confirm the authenticity of Dikko’s WAEC result at Government College, Kaduna, TheNEWS visited the school. Initially, it was difficult getting the authorities to speak, not to talk of giving information. The Vice-Principal, Mustapha Nuhu, said he could not unless a he got a court order requesting the school to do so. However, on Monday 15 September 2009 when this magazine visited again, the Principal, Alhaji Mustapha Nuhu, was available. So, it was quite easy to convince him to see why he should provide evidence that Dikko was first a student of the school and secondly that he graduated in 1980 as alleged.
Though he refused to check the records, Alhaji Nuhu proved Abdullahi Dikko was a student of Government College, Kaduna and that he graduated in 1979, exactly 30 years ago. He backed this claim up by providing picture evidence, where Dikko was in the midst of some of his 1979 classmates during the 30th reunion anniversary held on 15 August 2009 at the school premises.
The head boy during Dikko’s time in the school and classmate, Alhaji Buhari Iro, who is currently the National Vice-President of Kaduna Government College Old Boys Association, KADOBA, also confirmed to this magazine that the Customs Comptroller-General was a student of the college. He submitted: "Dikko is one of us and he even attended our reunion anniversary last month."
On assessment of his performance in school then as a student, Iro said Dikko Abdullahi (as he was known then) was a good and intelligent student and that he was not surprised to see him appointed as the Customs Comptroller-General. For him, those who are behind the certificate forgery scandal are enemies of Dikko and the country. However, he concluded that since the case is in court, time would tell whether or not he was a Government College student or possesses a forged certificate. But he was sure the ‘forgery scandal’ is unfounded and the court would prove him right.
TheNEWS got information that the Customs Comptroller-General has a younger brother, Kabir Idris Abdullahi, that resides in Kaduna. At his 2 Chad Street residence in Malali, Kaduna, Kabir first declined to speak, but when he was persuaded to see the implication of not doing so, he opened up. He started by heaping curses on people he described as "Dikko’s enemies". He noted that since his brother became the Comptroller-General of Customs, he had not been at peace. Kabir believes there are some people within and outside the Customs service and country who did not want his brother appointed as C-G.
He was quick to mention one Olajide whom he identified as a houseboy to Dikko before he was kicked out sometime in 2004 for stealing and constituting an ‘evil tool’ in the hands of Dikko’s enemies. Kabir wondered why Olajide had been on his brother’s neck, demanding ‘settlement after settlement’, even after his brother, Dikko, gave him N30,000 in 2004 after he was kicked out to start a Kampala (Adire) business. Kabir added that his brother later gave Olajide another N400,000 as financial assistance to go into flour business. He marvelled at the manner Olajide kept blackmailing him and extorting money afterwards. Meanwhile, Kabir said, he was not surprised that it was the same Olajide that enemies are using in respect of the certificate forgery scandal against his brother.
While Kabir defended his brother, sources around Dikko’s Malali residence, where Olajide stayed and worked, felt otherwise. He was the manager in the supermarket of Dikko’s wife. The sources told this magazine that there must be something between the two. One of them said if Dikko is sure he didn’t use Olajide to acquire a forged certificate, why had he always settled him whenever he demanded for money? After all, they said, "there was a reason he brought a Yoruba boy like Olajide from Lagos and gave him all the ample space in a house, particularly a Hausa residence, where he (Dikko) had his wife and children."
The sources disclosed further that Olajide and Dikko had always disagreed and settled. Typical of such was when Dikko was promoted in 2004, Olajide visited him and stayed for three weeks after he was sent packing from the house and they wondered why "Oga Dikko’ kept accommodating him and giving him money if nothing joins them".
But Kabir debunked the insinuation that Olajide and Dikko had anything secret except that the young man capitalised on the ‘soft nature’ of his brother to carry out his mischief and blackmail. He strongly believes that his brother Dikko would not succumb to cheap blackmail and threat.
For him, if there is any case of forgery against Dikko, it must be Olajide that forged the certificate to use it as he always does to extort money from him. Kabir stressed: "Could you imagine he is demanding for N25 million in court?"
He disclosed that Olajide was aware that armed robbers visited Dikko’s Abuja residence twice in 2004 and carted away many of his valuables and credentials. The robbery incident was reported to Life Camp Police Station of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. According to him, it is either Olajide organised those hoodlums to rob the house or he decided to capitalise on information that his certificate was stolen to forge another one, which he photocopied and presented to the court.
When the magazine went to WAEC office in Yaba over the alleged forged certificate, the spokesman, Mr Y.O Ari was attending a conference in Kaduna. But his secretary said such matter could better be handled by the Head of National Office. On getting there, the magazine was informed that he travelled to Australia.
On 3 September 2009, TheNEWS made efforts to call the Customs PRO, Mr. Joseph Attah, to clarify allegations of certificate forgery against his boss. When Attah’s phone was not going through, the medium sent a text message to his phone. He later called back to say that he was already discussing with another staff of TheNEWS; and that he had already directed him to the lawyer Chuks Nwana who had details of the story.
He said he was in Lagos and would be in Abuja by the following week with the court processes and other relevant materials relating to the court case. But he never showed up. By Friday 11 September 2009, this magazine placed a call to him and he said one of his relatives was hospitalised in Lagos. He promised to send a colleague of his in Abuja to meet with the magazine’s correspondents in Abuja with their own side of the story, but he never did. On Tuesday 15 September 2009, this magazine placed a call to Mr. Attah. Again he said the case was already in court and therefore he could not comment on it. "I have to stay clear of it as I am not in the legal department but in PR department, please bear with me. Don’t drag me into this matter. I don’t want to dabble into court matter. If it’s about Customs’ operations or seizures by Customs, that is my area. But this case is outside my jurisdiction. Please spare me," he pleaded.
The bio data of Dikko, which Sahara reporters obtained from him and published on its website, shows that he was born in 1960 and started his primary education at Musawa Primary School, Musawa, in 1967, from where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate. He also attended Government College, Kaduna in 1974/75, from where he obtained the West Africa School Certificate in 1979/80.
He claimed that he later attended the University of Dimitrov Apostle Tshenov, Suishtov in Bulgaria, where he graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Master’s in Finance, with special emphasis on Investment Finance. Thereafter, Dikko, as contained in his CV, sat for ANAN qualifying Examinations and qualified as an accountant, thereby becoming a Certified National Accountant.
But the on-line publication wrote that its investigation "did not show a ‘University of Dimitrov Apostle Tshenov, Suishtov, Bulgaria, as claimed by Abdullahi Dikko in his CV, but a ‘D. A. Tsenov Academy of Economics.’ At the time of filing this report, we could not confirm if Dikko attended the D. A. Tsenov Academy of Economics".
– Additional reports by Oluokun Ayorinde, Tony Orilade, Nnamdi Felix, Femi Adi and Alex Akinyele.
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