Politics
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NDUKA Obaigbena, chairman and editor-in-chief of Thisday newspaper, has admitted that Sambo Dasuki, a retired colonel and immediate past national security adviser, NSA, paid him N670 million as compensation for attacks on his newspaper’s offices in Abuja and Kaduna in 2012.
Obaigbena said he also received compensation for the illegal seizure of newspapers by men of the armed forces.
The publisher made the disclosure while responding to an invitation by the Economic and Financial Commission, EFCC, in connection to the ongoing probe into how $2.1 billion arms procurement fund was disbursed by the office of the NSA under Dasuki.
In a letter, dated December 9, 2015, addressed to the chairman of the EFCC, Obaigbena said he was in the United States and would honour the invitation in person as soon as he returned to the country.
He, however, said he considered it necessary to issue a statement prior to his return. He claimed that all funds he received from the office of the NSA, ONSA, were “payment for compensation to mitigate” terror attacks on the head office of his newspaper in Abuja and another attack on the newspaper’s office in Kaduna.
“N100,000,000 +N100,000,000 and N250,000,000 respectively received in August, November and February 2014 as compensation to mitigate the dastardly Boko Haram twin bombing of the Thisday newspapers offices in Abuja and Kaduna on Thursday April 26, 2012, during which four innocent Nigerian lives were lost, our building destroyed and we lost full colour Goss printing towers and three (3) pre-press Computer-To-Plate and auxiliary equipment and other (in)valuable property valued at over N2.5 billion having lost our printing facility to terrorists due to inadequate protection by the Federal Government of Nigeria,” he wrote.
Obaigbena said that he was compelled to make the request after the federal government spent N3 billion in reconstructing the United Nations office that was bombed by Boko Haram in August 2011.
He further wrote that he received additional N120 million in March 2015 on behalf of the Newspaper Proprietors Association of Nigeria, NPAN and 12 newspapers who asked to be compensated for the “unlawful seizure and stoppage of circulation by armed soldiers in Abuja and several cities.”
As chairman of the NPAN, Obaigbena said that he did that to forestall a planned of action the newspapers were going to institute against the government.
Obaigbena is the second owner of a mainstream media organisation, after Raymond Dokpesi, founder of DAAR Communications, owners of Africa Independent Television and Raypower radio network, who have been mentioned in the investigation.
Dokpesi, who is still in the EFCC custody, is facing a six-count charge of fraud and money laundering in a federal High Court in Abuja.
Some senior members of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, are also in custody with Dasuki on their involvement in the diversion of the fund.
— Dec 11, 2015 @ 18:18 GMT
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