Sacked Department of States Services (DSS) boss, Lawal Daura shocking secrets have been revealed by his former assistant, Abdulwahab Abdulrahman…

“Lawal Daura serially betrayed his boss, President Muhammadu Buhari, for money. Daura and I were members of the Buhari campaign’s security committee in the buildup to 2015 election. The committee was led by the current Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau. I served as the secretary of the 25-member committee.”

“I noticed immediately we started work that for Lawal Daura it is simply about the money. In one of earlier meetings he suggested that we should request for one billion to start work. Where will Buhari see one billion to give us?”

“In the course of our work as part of the transition team after President Buhari won the election, Mr Daura kept producing fake reports about Ita Ekpenyong his predecessor, but we never knew what he was targeting until late.”

“Mr Daura soon developed the habit of going to President Buhari’s influential cousin, Mamman Daura, to report Mr Ekpenyong and give details of what the election committee was doing.”

That way Lawal Daura warmed his way into Mamman Daura’s heart. Despite coming from the same neighbourhood in Katsina state, President Buhari never knew Lawal Daura until 2015. He was introduced to the president by the late Senator Mustapha Bukar.”

“Mr Daura was never a favourite of President Buhari because of his antecedents, he was somehow imposed on him by Mamman Daura and others close to him. When he was appointed he kept putting pressure on me and Maikano, the current AO (admin officer) at the presidential villa to come and work with him as SA. He assured me that what I will get under him, I cannot get even as a Minister.”

“Mr Daura feared the DG job may not be very easy since he had never worked at the headquarters and was not an operational staff. He said he wants the two of us to stabilise the service for him. I eventually agreed the offer after much pressure. As the work commenced, Daura was receiving money from everyone including the president’s enemies”.

“When we resumed, we always closed late at work, often at about 2am. What are we doing was mostly, receiving Ghana must go bags filled with cash brought by enemies of government to him.”

“The rate of corruption on that fourth floor was too much and the president doesn’t deserve this. He will go and get information on plans for Senate president Bukola Saraki and then leak it to him.”

“Mr Daura operated an repressive administration that stamped on staff rights just as it did on Nigerians. In all, the scale of corruption at the agency was shocking.

“At some point agents working for Mr Daura stopped going to the bureau de change to carry out transactions on his behalf. Rather, they invite the secretary of the bureau de change at that Sheraton Hotel gate to come to the office late at night with their counting machines, counting dollars.”

“When I had too much I decided to leave and I swore to the directors who wanted me to stay because of their personal interest that Daura will leave office in handcuffs because of what I saw.”

“I was preaching to him that he needs to help Mr President because you know you don’t deserve this office and he appointed you, because of that he stopped my pension for two years until I threaten to go to court.”

“The former DG was sacked from the SSS originally before his reappointment by Mr Buhari because he was caught siphoning diesel from the SSS Academy in Kaduna.”

“Before then, he was almost sacked when he was State Director in Lagos. Bola Tinubu, who was governor of Lagos State donated 20 vehicles to aid the work of the DSS in the state; Babatunde Fashola, who is a minister now, was the Chief of Staff to the governor at that time. Lawal Daura took all the vehicles to Kano and sold them off.”

“Mr Daura had to be secretly taken away in Edo state because of how he was misusing staff stipends. Just like how they had to use the back door to ferry him away from Aso Rock. You will wonder why he was not taken back to the service facility? He wouldn’t have survived it. I have been receiving calls all day from some of our top directors and staff, everyone is in a joyous mood about his sack.”

“In fact a director told me that all his life, he never drank beer, but today, he will drink to celebrate how this service is finally saved from destruction.”

“Mr Daura was too arrogant as DG of SSS. He had no respect for the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, whom he should be reporting to. He never had any respect for the Vice President Osinbajo. Whenever the Vice President calls for a meeting for 2 o’clock Daura will come by 3 and will not apologies. There was a time they had serious shouting match with Magu over the disrespect shown to the VP and the VP had to ask Magu to keep quiet.”

“The problem between EFCC boss, Ibrahim Magu and Daura is that Daura wanted Magu to share information on high profile cases with him. Magu is a smart officer and he knew Daura wanted to use such information to extort money from people. He told Daura to his face that ‘I can’t report to you, I only report to the president who appointed me’.”

“There was an interesting conversation between a former NSA Sambo Dasuki and Daura. Dasuki told Daura to be careful with this world. ‘I was one of the most powerful NSA, see me today. If you are not careful, you may replace me in this room one day’.”

– Culled from PremiumTimes