So imagine a national emergency, like a real,
terrifying, unimaginable crisis. Right. It's
the kind of situation where you don't haggle
over the price of a fire hose because your entire
house is actively burning down. Yeah, you just
act. Exactly. You just open the vault, point
to the problem, and say, whatever it takes, just
get it done. Because in those critical moments,
Speed just becomes the absolute priority. Standard
bureaucracy, the usual layers of procurement
committees. They all suddenly look like fatal
bottlenecks. Precisely. The priority shifts entirely
from financial prudence to immediate survival.
You need the gear. and you need it yesterday.
But what happens when the people holding the
keys to that emergency vault decide that the
burning house is actually a highly convenient
opportunity? Terrifying thought. Right, an opportunity
to finance a massive political campaign, buy
favorable media coverage, or even pay for what
gets categorized on paper as spiritual purposes.
Yeah, that's where things get really wild. Today
we are doing a deep dive into the source material
surrounding Dasukigate. We're tracing the exact
path of a staggering $2 billion anti -terrorism
budget to see how it just vanished. Into the
pockets of political elites, yeah. Exactly, turning
into one of the most astonishing scandals of
the 21st century. To really understand the mechanics
of this, we have to look at the environment that
made it possible. because the context is everything.
Right, take us back. So, as we all probably remember
from the horrors of April 2014, the world was
watching Nigeria in absolute shock. The Boko
Haram insurgent group had just kidnapped 276
schoolgirls in Chibok. Just an absolute tragedy.
Completely. And the political and international
pressure on the Nigerian government under then
-President Goodluck Jonathan was immense. I mean,
they needed to show overwhelming force. Right.
which required immediate massive funding to equip
the military. They needed a rapid response. And
the scale of that funding was just monumental.
We are looking at extra budgetary spending here.
Huge amounts. Yeah. The financial records and
subsequent investigative committee reports show
an allocation of 643 .8 billion naira. And that's
not even counting the foreign currency. Right.
Plus an additional spending of about 2. $2 billion
in foreign currency. And this money completely
bypassed the standard Ministry of Defense channels.
It went straight to the Office of the National
Security Advisor. Exactly. The NSA, which was
under the leadership of Colonel Sam Bodasuki.
And the stated mandate was entirely straightforward.
I mean, on paper, it made sense. Use these funds
to buy helicopters, fighter jets, ammunition,
and tactical gear to crush the insurgency. Right,
buy the fire hoses for the burning house. Exactly.
However, when a presidential investigations committee
was later inaugurated in August 2015 by the incoming
president, Mohamedouh Buhari, their audit revealed
a completely different reality. Oh, completely.
Very little of that $2 .2 billion was ever actually
converted into military hardware. Okay, let's
unpack this because the sheer scale of the missing
money is difficult to visualize. It really is.
We're talking about billions meant to stop a
violent insurgency. How does a fund created during
a national tragedy just evaporate? Well, they
didn't just write a bad check. Right. We really
need to examine the actual mechanics of this
heist. They engineered an entire labyrinth of
illusory defense contracts. Yeah. The committee
analyzed 513 specific contracts that were awarded
by the Office of the National Security Advisor
during this period. 513. Right. And out of those,
they identified 53 entirely failed contracts.
Now, 53 out of over 500 might sound like a manageable
margin of error. in a wartime scenario? Sure,
until you isolate the monetary value of those
specific failures. This is the crazy part. It
is. The amount of foreign currency drained by
just those 53 phantom contracts was more than
twice the $1 billion loan that the National Assembly
had officially approved for borrowing from the
World Bank. Wait, really? Let that sink in for
a second. The money hemorrhaged on just the failed
contracts alone was double the official international
loan taken out to fund the entire war effort.
It's staggering. And looking at how these deals
were structured, it reads less like a military
procurement strategy and more like an international
shell game. Oh, 100%. Like, take the situation
that unfolded the month after the Chibok kidnapping.
The Marion Ford situation. Yes. The Nigerian
army somehow ends up attempting to procure weapons
through an American expatriate living in Prague
named Marion Ford. It perfectly illustrates the
chaotic, almost deliberate lack of due diligence.
I mean... Marion Ford was approached to broker
this massive arms deal, but he didn't even possess
the necessary legal licenses to trade in international
arms. Unbelievable. So to circumvent this, he
signed an agency agreement with an actual arms
dealer named Era Delarian. OK, so he outsources
it. Right. And Delarian operated a company that
was split between Fresno, California and Sofia,
Bulgaria. So let me get this straight. The defense
of a nation facing a massive insurgency relies
on an unlicensed American in the Czech Republic
who then outsources the job to a guy splitting
his time between California and Bulgaria. That's
exactly what the sources show. And the mechanism
completely collapsed under international law.
I mean, of course it did. Delarian was eventually
charged and arrested by U .S. authorities in
2019. The U .S. Department of State strictly
regulates international arms brokering by U .S.
citizens through compulsory licenses. Which I'm
guessing his company did not have. Nope. They
did not have them for the specific contracts
they signed with a vendor for the National Security
Advisor back in 2014. Wow. So it devolved into
this tangled web of frozen assets and international
legal trouble. Now, the High Court of Nigeria
did later, in August 2022, clear that specific
vendor, Socia, take him on to Internationale
and return their frozen assets. OK. But the initial
reliance on unlicensed brokers just shows how
the standard protocols for international military
procurement were entirely abandoned. It's like
having a corporate black card with an unlimited
balance. And instead of hiring a licensed contractor
to fix your collapsing roof, you hand the card
to a guy you met at a bus stop. A guy who promises
he knows a guy in another country with some tarps.
Exactly. But here is where I have to push back
on the mechanics of this. I mean, I understand
how contracts can fail or get bogged down in
international courts, but I know what it takes
to wire even a few thousand dollars internationally.
There are forms, anti -money laundering checks,
compliance officers. Oh, absolutely. I find it
structurally impossible to believe a central
bank just hands over billions of dollars. Was
there really zero paperwork or was the paperwork
just highly classified? You are hitting on the
exact vulnerability that was exploited here.
It wasn't an absence of paperwork. It was the
weaponization of a specific bureaucratic classification.
Okay. How so? The system was bypassed using a
legal loophole meant for covert operations. And
this brings us to the confession of Shaibu Salisu,
the former Director of Finance in the Office
of the National Security Advisor. Oh, the 11
suitcases. Exactly. In his written statement
to investigators, Salisu detailed a directive
from Sambotosuki to go directly to the Central
Bank of Nigeria. And he just walks in. Salisu
literally walked in, collected $47 million in
physical cash, plus a balance in euros, packed
it all into about 11 suitcases, and had it driven
directly to to Duski's residential address in
Asakoro. What's fascinating here is the sheer
audacity of moving $47 million in suitcases to
a private home. It's like something out of a
movie. Like, how does the governor of a central
bank legally authorize a pallet of cash to walk
out the front door? Because of a phrase that
acts as an accounting black hole. Two words.
Special Services. Special Services. Solisa stated
that the official request for the funds was simply
tagged with those two words, signed by the National
Security Advisor and handed to the central bank
governor. Wow. So that's the magic password.
In a system operating under an extreme, officially
recognized national security emergency, Special
Services is the ultimate override code. Because
you can't really audit a covert operation. Exactly.
It is designed for paying covert informants or
funding off -the -books intelligence operations
where receipts would endanger lives. By slapping
that classification on massive withdrawals, the
Office of the National Security Advisor legally
blinded the compliance departments. So they couldn't
even ask questions if they wanted to. Right.
The investigative committee found billions of
naira transferred to single companies with no
underlying agreements No tax fulfillment records
and no delivery schedules. The normal auditing
reality was suspended So if the vault is open
and the auditors are locked out, where does the
money actually go? Well That is the big question.
Because 11 suitcases of physical cash and billions
in untraceable wire transfers don't just evaporate
into the ether, they land in someone's hands.
They leave a trail eventually. Right. And when
you trace the funds, you don't find international
arms dealers. You find local politicians. We
are leaving the realm of defense procurement
and entering the architecture of a massive political
slush fund. The paper trail became incredibly
vocal once the authorities moved in. Yeah, let's
talk about that. Nigeria's primary anti -graft
agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,
or EFCC, alongside the Department of State Services,
began making high -profile arrests. Starting
with Sambo Dasuki and Shibu Salusu. Exactly.
And once the key players were in custody and
realized the scale of the evidence against them,
they started talking. The overriding narrative
that emerged from their confessions was that
the counter -terrorism funds were deliberately
diverted. To sponsor the 2015 reelection campaign
of then -President Goodluck Jonathan. That was
the claim, yes. Okay, before we break down the
specific names and the astonishing justifications
given for these payouts, we really need to pause
and make something very clear to you, the listener.
Yes, this is a crucial point. The financial tracing
and the subsequent confessions we are discussing
involve highly politically charged allegations.
These center around Nigeria's major political
parties. Specifically, the PDP, which was the
ruling party at the time, and the APC, which
was the incoming administration pushing the investigation.
Right. And we are not taking any sides here?
We do not endorse any political viewpoints, nor
do we validate the political motivations behind
who was arrested. We are strictly and impartially
unpacking the claims, the financial records and
the fierce denials exactly as they were documented
in the source material during the investigation.
Exactly. Just reporting what the sources say.
And that context is vital because the investigation
paints a picture of a defense office that completely
morphed into a political financier. When you
look at the specific disbursements, The connection
to military hardware just vanishes completely.
Let's look at those disbursements, because the
justifications honestly defy logic. First, the
records show 2 .1 billion naira transferred to
Chief Raymond Dokpezi, the chair emeritus of
DIR Communications. Right. When investigators
asked why Media Mogul was receiving anti -terrorism
friends, he openly claimed the massive payout
was for media and political campaigns to support
the president's re -election. It's right out
in the open. Then the investigation traced 650
million naira to the account of Nduka Obagbana,
the publisher of the Thiste newspaper. Okay,
and what was his reason? When confronted, his
management team offered a different defense.
They claimed the money was government compensation
to mitigate the damage their offices suffered
during the Boko Haram twin bombings years earlier.
Which begs the question, why is the Office of
the National Security Advisor acting as a property
insurance adjuster using an emergency weapons
budget? It's a great question, and it just keeps
going. Musili Obanikoro, a former minister of
state for defense, reportedly detailed to authorities
how he physically transported $5 million from
the arms fund. And who did he give it to? He
said he handed it over to Ayo Faiyosa, a former
governor. Wow. But the justification that truly
breaks the scale of standard accounting comes
from Atahiru Bafuroa. the former governor of
Sokoto state. Oh yes, this one is... The financial
trace showed he received 4 .6 billion naira,
and his official response to the allegation was
that the money was given to him for spiritual
purposes. Spiritual purposes? I have to ask,
from an auditing perspective... How does a financial
system even process a multi -million dollar line
item for spiritual purposes? It processes it
because the person writing the check is also
the person defining the rules. I guess so. When
an institution operates entirely devoid of independent
oversight, justifications become entirely subjective.
There was no coherent legal basis for these financial
transactions. It's just whatever sounds good
at the time. What we are seeing is the complete
hijacking of an institution. The tragic reality
of the Boko Haram insurgency provided this impenetrable
shield of national security. Which means no one
can look at the books. Exactly. That shield insulated
the spending from the auditor general, allowing
vast sums of state wealth to be distributed for
media buys, political mobilization, and entirely
undefined spiritual campaigns. So with the money
scattered across the political elite like a high
-stakes game of musical chairs, the inevitable
happens when the music stops. A new administration
comes in? Yep. The anti -graft agencies pull
the actual bank records and the accused are suddenly
sitting across from interrogators. And it triggers
a spectacular domino effect. It instantly devolved
into a survivalist blame game. Everybody turning
on everybody. Pretty much. Yeah. When Sam Modusuki
was first transferred to the ESCC, he completely
stonewalled the investigators. He refused to
write a formal statement, arguing that he was
being subjected to an illegal media trial and
a political witch hunt. But the investigators
didn't need him to confess first, did they? Because
they already had the architect of the transfers.
Exactly. They had Shibu Saletsu, the director
of finance. The suitcase guy. The suitcase guy.
Saletsu had already been thoroughly interrogated
and had written a comprehensive confessional
statement, the exact document detailing the central
bank withdrawals and the 11 suitcases. So what
did they do? The EFCC operatives simply walked
into Desuki's interrogation room and placed Saletsu's
written confession on the table. Oh, man. The
documented reaction from Dasuki is almost cinematic.
He reads through his own finance director's detailed
account, looks up, and reportedly says, you mean
Solisio wrote all these? You mean he said these?
Give me a pen and paper. Just like that, the
dam breaks. He begins writing out a comprehensive
list of the political figures who received the
diverted funds. That moment sparked a massive
chain reaction of indictments across the political
spectrum. Because once the central node of the
operation starts providing names, everyone downstream
has to scramble to explain why state funds ended
up in their private accounts. It's true. And
here's where it gets really interesting. Oh,
it gets more interesting. Oh, yeah. Because the
Confessions started painting a picture of a highly
organized, Distribution Network. Ambassador Bashir
Yiguta, the former Minister of State for Finance,
was arrested and provided a confessional statement
detailing how he acted as a distributor. What
did he claim? He outlined handing out 600 million
naira to six zonal chairmen of the ruling party's
Contact and Mobilization Committee for the 2015
election. He specifically stated he gave 100
million naira to each chairman. Wow. But you
cannot publicly accuse highly entrenched political
figures of receiving embezzled defense funds
without triggering a fierce, highly calibrated
counteroffensive. Oh, the pushback was intense.
The individuals named immediately went on the
defensive, utilizing partial admissions combined
with technical denials. Right. Like Chief Bo
George. He was identified by Youguta as one of
those zonal chairman and he issued a vehement
public denial labeling Youguta's claim as mischievous
and deliberately fraudulent. But he didn't deny
receiving money altogether, which is the fascinating
part. Yeah. Bo George admitted that his committee
did meet to reconcile party factions and he acknowledged
that Youguta handed the committee cash. But the
amount was the issue. Right. He insisted the
amount was only thirty thousand dollars, which
was less than six million naira at the exchange
rate back then. Quite a difference from one hundred
million. Massive difference. And he heavily stressed
that it was strictly to reimburse the committee
elders for their transportation, hotel accommodations
and feeding allowances. Not a one hundred million
naira campaign slush fund. And this strategy
of denial reached the absolute highest level
of the previous administration. You mean Goodluck
Jonathan? Yes. Former President Goodluck Jonathan,
while speaking at a forum in Washington D .C.,
forcefully refuted the allegations surrounding
his office. What did he say exactly? He flatly
stated, Where do the money come from? I did not
award any $2 billion contract for procurement
of weapons. OK. While he admitted there were
some accounting irregularities, he claimed the
entire narrative was being wildly exaggerated
by the incoming government to discredit him.
But financial and political analysts immediately
flagged the former president's statement as highly
evasive. Why did that specific phrasing raise
so many red flags? Well, if we connect this to
the bigger picture, the phrasing, I did not award
any $2 billion contract, is a master class in
technical evasion. Right, because it wasn't one
single contract. Exactly. He was sidestepping
the actual mechanism of the fraud. Dasukigate
wasn't about a single massive two billion dollar
purchase order with the president's signature
at the bottom. It was death by a thousand cuts.
It was an amalgamation of hundreds of smaller
fictitious contracts combined with direct physical
cash withdrawals from the central bank. All legally
facilitated through the Office of the National
Security Advisor. And the president doesn't sign
those daily withdrawal slips. No, the NSA does.
This web of partial confessions, where a politician
admits to taking travel money but denies taking
campaign money, perfectly illustrates the incredible
difficulty of prosecuting systemic corruption.
Because the individuals involved deliberately
blur the legal definitions. Exactly. When does
a legitimate hotel reimbursement cross the line
into an illegal campaign contribution? And when
does a campaign contribution get exposed as the
direct laundering of stolen national security
funds? By the time the auditors finally get access
to the books, the financial waters have been
completely muddied. Which brings us to the ultimate
resolution of this sprawling web. We've traced
how the emergency loophole was exploited, how
the money was scattered to media moguls and politicians,
and how the entire network turned on itself when
the anti -graft agencies closed in. But what
is the actual tangible aftermath of Dasukigate.
I mean, what came of all this? The investigative
committee's probe resulted in the indictment
of over 300 companies and citizens, a list that
included serving and retired military officers
who facilitated the phantom contracts. And they
actually did get some of the money back, right?
They did. The financial recovery efforts yielded
significant tangible results. The presidential
administration reported that over 7 billion naira
had been successfully recovered from indicted
companies and individuals. That's a huge sum.
Furthermore, the committee mandated that another
41 billion naira was slated to be refunded by
several of the corporate entities involved in
the failed procurement deals. And my absolute
favorite detail from the recovery phase, several
top officials reportedly rushed to return 1 .4
billion naira just a single week after the government
released its initial statement of intent to prosecute.
Amazing how that happens. Right. It is amazing
how quickly people can locate massive sums of
money they previously claimed to know nothing
about when the threat of a prison sentence becomes
a reality. Truly a miracle. So what does this
all mean for you listening to this deep dive
right now? It is very easy to look at Desucagate
as just a localized political scandal, like a
product of a specific administration in a specific
country. But it's much bigger than that. It is,
because the mechanics of this heist are entirely
reliant on basic human nature and the universal
exploitation of a crisis. It demonstrates how
terrifyingly easy it is for a genuine life -or
-death national security emergency to be weaponized
by the people in charge to permanently bypass
transparency. And this raises an important question,
because the knowledge we gain from history is
most valuable when we apply it to the systems
we interact with today. The core lesson here
isn't strictly about the intricacies of the 2015
Nigerian elections. It is a profound masterclass
in the inherent vulnerability of emergency funding.
No matter where you live. Right. Whenever a government
system intentionally strips away its standard
checks, balances and public bidding laws in the
name of pure expediency, whether the crisis is
a localized war, a global pandemic or a catastrophic
natural disaster, it creates an administrative
shadow environment. And in that shadow environment,
the rules just don't apply. The safeguarding
of the public treasury is no longer guaranteed
by the law. It becomes entirely dependent on
the personal unchecked integrity of a very small,
very powerful group of people. And as we've seen
today, relying solely on personal integrity when
there are billions of dollars sitting on the
table can lead to some highly creative definitions
of spiritual purposes. It certainly can. So we
want to leave you with a final thought to mull
over as you navigate the news cycle. When a government,
anywhere in the world, declares a state of emergency
and purposefully bypasses standard financial
oversight for the sake of moving quickly, who
is actually holding the keys to the vault? That's
a question you have to ask. Next time you read
the headlines about a massive, fast -tracked
emergency spending bill being passed in the middle
of the night, ask yourself, could 11 suitcases
be walking out the back door? Something to think
about. Thank you for joining us on this deep
dive into the underlying mechanics of Dasukigate.
you next time.