ANTI-BUHARI INTERVIEW: DEFENCE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY INVITES OLAWUNMI FOR INTERROGATION

Navy Commodore, Kunle Olawunmi (retired).

The Defence Intelligence Agency has reportedly declared a former Nigerian Navy Commodore, Kunle Olawunmi, wanted for exposing in an interview how the President Muhammadu Buhari's administration refused to probe high profile politicians whom Boko Haram terrorists named as their sponsors.

The retired naval officer is said to be summoned by the DIA to report to at its headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, 31 August, with his international passport.

On Wednesday 25 August, Commodore Olawunmi was a guest on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’ breakfast programme, in which he had hinted that the Nigerian government knew those behind the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency in the country. 

In the interview, he had said, “They [government] know. Of course, it is in the news. In April this year, the government said they had arrested 400 Bureau De Change (BDCs)-related people that were sponsoring Boko Haram. They told us.

“We know them. Why can’t this government, if not that they are partisan, bring those people out for trial?

“I can’t come on air and start mentioning names of people that are presently in government that the boys we arrested mentioned. Some of them are governors now. Some of them are in the Senate. Some of them are in Aso Rock.”

He had condemned Tuesday's attack by bloodthirsty bandits on the Kaduna campus of Nigeria’s foremost military university, the Nigerian Defence Academy, where two military officers were killed and another kidnapped.

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The Deputy Director Defence Administration, who is also a Professor of Global Security Studies, also added, “It is an aberration; you don’t attack the Nigerian Defence Academy and get away with it. In 2017, I carried out an investigation by the Minister of Defence that wanted me to check what was going on with the training and the security there (NDA). I remember I spent about a week in the NDA with the Commandant and the staff but something struck me: every Friday, the gate of NDA is thrown open and everybody has access to pray in the mosque.

“On Fridays, you are going to see the same thing happening across all military formations in the country. If you go to Defence Headquarters, I served at the Defence Headquarters as the Deputy Director, Defence Administration, between 2015 and 2017, throughout my two years at Defence Headquarters, I received visitors twice because of the strict security architecture there but every Friday, the gate of the Defence Headquarters is thrown wide open for everybody to come in and observe Juma’at.

“That is the time the terrorists have the time to profile our security environment. It has always been the case. I have served the military intelligence for the past 35 years. Our problem is religion and socio-cultural.

“The centre of gravity of Boko Haram in Nigeria is the sponsors of the programme. It was beyond us because the job we needed to do was kinetic but we cannot resolve the issues of sponsors of Boko Haram that were in Buhari’s government that we know them. That was why we couldn’t pursue that aspect that could have resolved the issue because we need to arrest people.”

Olawunmi had also said that the Department of State Services, DSS had tremendous information on terrorists but they could not do anything except by the body language of the Commander-In-Chief.