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How a failed plot by Nigeria’s secret police vigorously shook the Buhari Presidency

Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of governance, was barely roaring to life Tuesday morning when the country was jolted with news of a blockade of the National Assembly by operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS)

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Abuja, Nigeria’s seat of governance, was barely roaring to life Tuesday morning when the country was jolted with news of a blockade of the National Assembly by operatives of the Department of State Security (DSS).

The men, fully clad in combat wears and clutching assault rifles, stood menacingly, and held their grounds while stranded lawmakers fretted as they were denied entry to their offices. Only one of the masked men managed to utter, ‘Orders from above’ as reason for the stand-off.

The embarrassing incident was captured on live television.

The day before had offered an inkling into what would transpire. Senate President Bukola Saraki had informed that, in response to demands by the Buhari administration, the leadership of the National Assembly would meet Tuesday to consider some matters of urgent national interest.

The lawmakers had been on recess and were hoping to return to legislative duties late September. Among the issues that required the attention of the legislature were requests by the Executives for funding of the country’s electoral commission, INEC, and a supplementary budget for 2018.

The vacation itself had been hurriedly put together. It came almost minutes after some 52 lawmakers from both the Senate and House of Representatives upset the nation’s power structure by defecting from the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) to the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Critics have argued that the vacation was forced to prevent the Presidency and the ruling party from contemplating an immediate response. The handicap was not to last for long. Plot to undo Saraki, who himself had joined the defection gale and become leader of the camp, was activated clandestinely.

The Chairman of the ruling party, Adams Oshiomhole, fired the first shot, calling on Saraki to ‘honorably’ relinquish the ‘crown’. Other members of APC were not as diplomatic and made veiled references to impeachment plans, insisting that it ran against common norm and convention for a minority party to produce the leadership of the legislature.

Monday night had seen both parties building scenarios on what the opposing camp could be working on. While the APC feared PDP could embarrass the Presidency with an impeachment move, the latter was almost certain that the Senate President was going to be removed.

By Tuesday, mutual suspicions had run so deep. This was not helped by confirmed reports of planned defection of the Minority Leader, Godswill Akpabio, from PDP to APC.

Speculations had been rife that Akpabio was being positioned to take over the position of the Senate President.

The drama of Tuesday reached a climax when the bunch of APC legislators boycotted the meeting called by the Senate President, Saraki, opting instead to hold a caucus assembly elsewhere in the nation’s capital. While they retreated, their PDP counterparts were left to confront the siege by DSS operatives, spurring speculations that the Presidency was remotely linked to the ugly scenes that had played out.

With uproar from the media, and global attention turned to Nigeria, attempts to breach the constitution caved in. The platoon of secret policemen were quickly withdrawn, leaving Acting President Yemi Osinbajo to tackle what many have now described as an assault on Nigeria’s democracy.

Osinbajo’s immediate move to mange the image disaster was to order the sack and arrest of the Director-General of DSS, Lawal Daura, who had been fingered as the unseen hand in the Tuesday fiasco that brought the country so much shame.

In a terse statement made via his twitter handle, Osinbajo’s media aide, Laolu Akande, said, “AgP has directed the termination of the appointment of the DG of DSS Lawal Musa Daura.

“Mr Daura has been directed to handover to the most senior officer of the State Security Service until further notice”

He added, “the unlawful act which was done without the knowledge of the Presidency is condemnable and completely unacceptable.

“By this statement, Professor Osinbajo is consequently assuring Nigerians that all persons within the law enforcement apparatus who participated in this travesty will be identified and subjected to appropriate disciplinary action”.

Many have hailed Osinbajo’s initiative but not a few are worried that he may be ruffling some feathers given that the sacked Daura is not just an appointee of incumbent President Muhammadu Buhari but also a very close kinsman.

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While Buhari is expected to be back from vacation in a couple days, his media aide, Femi Adesina, addressing the press on Wednesday said, “the Presidency is one”, in obvious reference to insinuations that Osinbajo may not have secured his principal’s not before firing his appointee.

Analysts argue that the full import of Daura’s sack can only be felt if Buhari returns to office and sustains the Vice President’s effort at enforcing constitutionalism and rule of law.

The battle against impunity remains a huge challenge. Buhari will resume from leave to meet the case of Benue and Akwa Ibom States whose accounts have been frozen by the anti-graft agency, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

Close watchers believe that the dilemma of both states may not be far from the fact they had been caught up in the defection saga.

APC and PDP continue to trade blames over the National Assembly fracas, with each side accusing the other of recruiting the secret police in pursuit of party agenda.

Politics

Ugandan opposition politician abducted, wife says

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According to his wife on Wednesday, a well-known opposition leader from Uganda, Kizza Besigye was abducted during a book launch in Kenya over the weekend, taken to Uganda, and detained at a military prison in Kampala.

Despite his rejection of the results, Besigye has run against Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni four times and lost each time, claiming voting intimidation and fraud. He has been arrested several times in the past.

“I request the (government) of Uganda to release my husband Dr Kizza Besigye from where he is being held immediately,” said his wife Winnie Byanyima.

It was not immediately possible to get in touch with a Ugandan military spokesperson for comment.

“As police we don’t have him, so we can’t make any comment,” Ugandan police spokesman Kituuma Rusoke told Reuters.
A spokesperson for Kenya’s national police did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, one of Uganda’s major opposition parties, had 36 members arrested by Kenyan police in July. They were then deported to Uganda and accused of terrorism-related charges.

On the social networking site X, Byanyima stated that Besigye, who served as Museveni’s doctor during the guerrilla war but later turned into a vocal opponent, was abducted on Saturday as senior Kenyan opposition leader Martha Karua was launching a book.

“I am now reliably informed that he is in a military jail in Kampala,” said Byanyima, who is the executive director of UNAIDS, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. “We his family and his lawyers demand to see him. He is not a soldier. Why is he being held in a military jail?”

Museveni’s administration has been charged with repeatedly violating the human rights of opposition leaders and followers, including extrajudicial executions, torture, and unlawful detentions.

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Sudan army chief Burhan meets US envoy

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The United States special envoy to Sudan has made his first trip to the African nation, hoping to bring an end to a horrific war and boost relief to millions of people in need.

After being appointed Washington’s ambassador to Sudan in February, Tom Perriello visited Port Sudan, the army-led government’s de facto capital on the Red Sea coast.

For the first time since the evacuation of the U.S. embassy in April 2023 due to the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a top U.S. official visited the nation.

“We feel an enormous amount of urgency to end this crisis and to ensure that we can … help to get food and medicine and life-saving support to the 20 million people plus that are in need,” a State Department official said before the trip.

Over 25 million people, or half of Sudan’s population, require help, according to the U.N., as hunger has spread to one area and over 11 million people have abandoned their homes.

Sudan’s sovereign council stated in a statement that Perriello spoke with tribal, government, and humanitarian figures in addition to Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s army head.

During what the council described as a “lengthy, comprehensive, and frank” discussion, the two men talked about how to provide humanitarian help and how to end the war through a political process.

“The U.S. envoy presented several suggestions which the head of the sovereign council agreed to,” the statement said.

Although the army declined to join U.S.-mediated peace negotiations in Geneva earlier this year, the meetings did obtain commitments from the warring parties to increase access to aid.

A power battle between the army and the RSF preceded a planned shift to civilian government, which is why the conflict broke out more than a year ago.

Perriello discussed “the need to cease fighting, enable unhindered humanitarian access, including through localized pauses in the fighting to allow for the delivery of emergency relief supplies, and commit to a civilian government,” a State Department statement said.

“Right now, I think there’s a key opportunity to build on the expansion of humanitarian aid,” the State Department official stated, emphasising the need for relief corridors to the most battle-ravaged areas, such as al-Fashir, Sennar, and parts of the capital Khartoum, even though the U.S. would continue to pursue a more comprehensive ceasefire and negotiations.

Last Monday, Sudan’s sovereign council announced that it would prolong the temporary opening of the Adre border crossing with Chad. According to relief organisations, this crossing is essential for delivering food and other supplies to famine-prone portions of the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

An RSF official stated at a press conference in Nairobi that while they were still amenable to peace, they had doubts about the army’s readiness.

“They do not listen to any language but that of the rifle, and so we will continue to talk to them in the language they understand,” said Brigadier General Omar Hamdan.

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