A Senior Special Assistant to the President on Judiciary Reforms,
Juliet Ibekaku-Nwagwu, has given reasons a former National Security
Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki, may not be released despite the bail granted
him.
According to her, Nigeria must spare nothing in the fight against corruption.
She said that those calling for the release of Dasuki should consider
the fact that many innocent Nigerians died just because the former NSA
shared the money meant to fight insurgency to politicians.
Ibekaku-Nwagwu spoke with the Sun newspaper, saying, “I wish you
could tell me a couple of judgments that the government disobeyed apart
from the Dansuki’s case, which is really based on national security
interest.
“I want to know about other cases. If you have to balance national
security, the interest of persons and individuals, there has never been
any country where you allow an individual’s interest to override the
national security. And until we can come to grasp with the facts that an
individual sat back and allowed several human beings to be
killed and slaughtered in the North-east without using the money meant for buying arms for the military.
“Until we come to grasp with the fact that the fundamental problems
we have today, part of the security problems we have today, is traceable
to the corruption that started way back before this government came
into office.
“And if we are trying to balance that national security interest with
that of individual interest, I am sure the courts will review their
decision.
“The security problems we have today in Benue, Plateau, Taraba,
Adamawa and other states are not something that are just happening, it
goes beyond that. Somebody is funding it; somebody is equipping,
somebody is making sure that those people can go out and create so much
mayhem and kill several human beings.
“We need to come to terms that we have a national security problem in this country. And how we deal
with it sometimes is to allow a presidential directive to enable us to
deal with these problems. What I am saying is that when we talk about
the case as it is, we should always make sure that we do an analysis of
the historical antecedents that led us to
where we are today.
“The matter is still in court and the government of Nigeria reserves the
right to go to appeal on that decision. So, the government of Nigeria
is reviewing the judicial decision; the government of Nigeria will
determine whether to go on appeal and request for ‘stay of execution’ on
this matter. It is not a political matter.
“It is a security matter. I think between the judiciary and the
executive, there is an on-going discussion as to whether this particular
decision requires a further judicial review by way of an appeal. Let us
allow the appeal process to be exhausted.”