Some of Senate President Bukola Saraki's
aides involved in the November 20, 2015 theft
of N310 million being transported to the
senator have disclosed why they stole the
cash. The aides snatched the cash from a
bureau de change operator at 5 Nana Close,
Maitama in Abuja.
Tracked down by SaharaReporters and
speaking anonymously, some of Mr. Saraki’s
aides, who are currently on the run, said the
senator was in the habit of warehousing large
volumes of cash, mainly for use as bribes to
judges, investigators and prosecutors to
ensure the scuttling of his trial for false
assets declaration by the Code of Conduct
Tribunal (CCT).
The theft, first reported by SaharaReporters,
featured five officers of the Department of
State Security (DSS) led by Abdulrasheed
Maigari, the most senior of the DSS officers
attached to Senator Saraki. Mr. Maigari hails
from Dungo local government area of Taraba
State. The other DSS officers involved in the
heist were Ibbi George from Adamawa State,
Patrick Ishaya from Plateau State, Peter Okoye
from Delta State, and Solomon Yunusa from
Kogi State. Other participants included four
other aides of Mr. Saraki and five serving
military officers led by one Captain Hassan
Mshelia.
The aides at large revealed to a correspondent
of SaharaReporters that Senator Saraki often
used a house, 18 Lake Chad Crescent, Abuja,
as a warehouse for illegally acquired money.
They said huge stashes of cash from First
Bank Plc. branch located at Coomasie House
in Abuja were often stored in the house. The
aides added that the funds were then moved
on behalf of the Senate President for use in a
variety of special “political assignments”
ordered by Mr. Saraki.
The sources said cash was regularly moved
from the bank and the house on Lake Chad
Crescent to Mr. Saraki’s mansion at 5 Nana
Close in Maitama, from which lawyers as well
as judges and their designated representatives
collect the cash to obstruct justice.
They said Mr. Saraki regularly used five of his
official security aides, supported by five
soldiers usually chosen by Paul Ibok, his Chief
Security Officer, to move the funds. The aides
disclosed to SaharaReporters that, between
October and November 2015, there were three
cash movements to No 5 Nana Close.
According to them, the cash was usually
received by Mr. Saraki’s Deputy Chief of Staff,
Peter Makanjuola, who also has the duty of
distributing it to judicial officers with whom
various deals had been struck regarding plots
to scuttle the Senate President's trial.
In one instance, the aides disclosed, N550
million was delivered to Justice Alfa Belgore, a
former Chief Justice of Nigeria, to carry out
an illicit assignment of obstructing justice on
behalf of Mr. Saraki. On another occasion,
DSS officers working with soldiers took the
sum of N370 million to a venue. According to
the wanted DSS operatives, the Senate
President had 23 DSS operatives attached to
him. The DSS officers are split into two teams
(A and B), with both teams taking turns to
provide security for the Senate President, who
lives in an eight-bedroom official residence.
The building, known as “White House,” shares
a wall with the official residence of the
Inspector-General of Police.
Our sources said that, having observed the
unrestricted movement of large sums to
Senator Saraki’s home, some of his DSS aides
also developed an appetite for cash. Thus, on
November 20, 2015, an aide of Mr. Saraki
directed the leader of Team A, Ibrahim Shariff,
to call Mr. Maigari, who had been off duty, to
return to work for a “special assignment”. On
his return, Mr. Maigari was told to join four
colleagues and five soldiers to go meet one
Ibrahim Kabir, a First Bank employee, to pick
up money for the Senate President. They said
Mr. Kabir happens to be the account officer
for Hassan Abubakar Dankani, Mr. Saraki’s
favorite bureau de change operator. One
longtime associate stated that Mr. Saraki had
been using Mr. Dandani to launder funds since
the senator’s days as the governor of Kwara
State.
Our sources said that, with the increasing
scrutiny on him, Senator Saraki had decided
against using the DSS officers attached to him
to escort cash movement. Instead, the senator
asked the management of the bureau de
change to make their own arrangement for
security escorts to move the cash to Senator
Saraki's home.
However, with their own growing hunger for
money, Senator Saraki's security details had
hatched a plot to corner the cash. And they
recruited other colleagues and Captain
Mshelia. Dressed in military fatigue, the
security agents positioned themselves near
the senator’s home and ambushed the vehicle
in which the bureau de change operator was
conveying the cash. SaharaReporters learnt
that the security officers told those moving
the cash that they were under arrest for
money laundering. The police officers hired as
escorts by the bureau de change operator had
to leave the scene when the DSS men showed
their identification tags, which gave the
impression that they were on legal duty.
Once the policemen had left, the DSS officers,
including those attached to Mr. Saraki, told
the bureau de change operator that they knew
of the destination for the cash and that
moving huge sums of cash outside the
banking system was illegal. The DSS officers
then demanded N350 million in order to allow
the vehicle to proceed. After a period of
haggling, the officers settled for N310 million.
When Mr. Dankani was informed of the
development, he phoned Senator Saraki, who
instructed him never to mention his name in
connection with the cash. Unaware that those
who carried out the theft included members of
his security detail, Mr. Saraki thought he was
safe from being exposed.
Shortly after SaharaReporters reported the
heist, disclosing that the cash belonged to Mr.
Saraki, the senator’s spokesman, Yusuf
Olaniyonu, issued a statement denying the
senator’s ownership of the stolen money. “We
want to say categorically that Dr. Saraki is not
the owner of the stolen money. He does not
know the owner who is said to be a bureau de
change operator. The police that investigated
the robbery incident and the SSS, which issued
a statement on it, can confirm that there is no
link between the Senate President with the
ownership of the money,” Mr. Olaniyonu
claimed in a statement.
Mr. Olaniyonu also told SaharaReporters that
the police had issued a statement on the
matter. But when SaharaReporters demanded
where to find the said police statement, he
said we should check a ThisDay report, which
he claimed contained the police statement.
The paper quoted Wilson Inalegwu, Federal
Capital Territory Commissioner of Police, as
saying: “In the course of the investigation, we
were able to get the names and identities of
some of them (the suspects). Unfortunately,
two of the DSS operatives are attached to the
Senate President.”
Every step of the way, Mr. Saraki made valiant
efforts, abetted by the DSS boss, to prevent
the money from being linked to him. Mr.
Dankani, the owner of the bureau de change,
said the robbery took place at 5 Nana Close,
off Mississippi Road in Maitama and claimed
that the robbers dropped off his boys on the
outskirts of Abuja. His version of events,
however, was disputed by Mr. Saraki's DSS
aides, who told this online newspaper that
there was no need to have taken them, as
there was no confrontation between them and
Mr. Dankani's boys. After taking the cash, the
aides said, they left for Maigari's house in
Keffi, Nasarawa State, where they shared the
loot before returning to work with Mr. Saraki.
Mr. Dankani also told SaharaReporters that he
is a nephew of former military head of state,
General Abdulsalami Abubakar. Mr. Saraki’s
DSS aides disclosed to SaharaReporters that
the ex-head of state and the Senate President
are very close friends, adding that they had
accompanied him numerous times on his
visits to Abubakar at his Lake Chad Crescent
mansion.
Six days after the theft, both Mr. Maigari and
Mr. Ibbi were arrested around 8:30 pm, as
they prepared to accompany Senator Saraki to
see President Muhammadu Buhari. After their
arrest, the wanted aides narrated, they
requested to see the DSS Director-General
(DG), Lawal Daura, to explain why they stole
the money. Mr. Daura declined the request,
but sent a DSS officer to tell them that the
matter would be resolved internally. He sent
firm instructions through the officer that the
arrested officers should make statements, but
ensure that such statements should not link
the stolen cash to Mr. Saraki in any way. As
such, the detained officers wrote
choreographed statements dictated to them by
investigators.
Mr. Saraki's aides on the run disclosed that
Mr. Daura and the Senate President are
intimate friends and that, on at least four
occasions, he secretly met with the senator
after the latter’s corruption trial had begun.
The first of the clandestine meetings took
place at Barcelona Apartments in Abuja. On
two other occasions, Mr. Daura and Senator
Saraki met at night at the Senate President's
official residence. SaharaReporters has
constantly reported that the DSS boss, Mr.
Daura, was providing strategic support to the
Senate President to help him frustrate his
trial.
A statement issued by the DSS on December
6, 2015 was carefully tweaked to give the
public the misleading impression that the
stolen cash belonged to the bureau de change
operator. The statement also failed to provide
details of the purported robbery. Signed by
Tony Opuiyo, the DSS statement said: “The
Department of State Services (DSS) wishes to
inform the general public that the Service has
arrested two (2) out of five (5) of its staff
involved in the robbery and sharing, on
November 20th, 2015, of the sum of three
hundred and ten million naira (N310m)
belonging to a Bureau De Change operator in
Abuja. While three (3) of the DSS staff are
now at large, the Military Authorities have
commenced a detailed investigation of five (5)
of its personnel involved in the crime.” It
added that preliminary investigations revealed
that Mr. Maigari conspired with four
colleagues to steal the money.
Currently, only Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi are in
detention at Kuje Prison, awaiting trial. The
others are at large. Representatives of the
detained operatives said the DSS first charged
them to court in April 2016, after media
reports revealed that the money stolen
belonged to Mr. Saraki. They were charged to
court for planning to demand their freedom
through the filing of a fundamental right
enforcement suit in Abuja.
Mr. Saraki's security aides who remain on the
run told SaharaReporters that five soldiers are
also in detention at Kuje Prison in connection
with the theft. In April, the police charged the
soldiers to court for robbery. But curiously, the
soldiers are being tried separately from the
DSS officers because the DSS refused to hand
over Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi to the police for
prosecution, claiming it did not trust the
police.
Representatives of the detained DSS officers
said they recently discovered that Sunday
Agaba, a man who accompanied them to steal
and was described as a bureau de change
operator, is actually a retired Army officer. He
was shot by the police as they arrested him.
When SaharaReporters blew the lid on this,
both Mr. Maigari and Mr. Ibbi were removed
from the underground cell where they had
been kept and allowed for the first time to
meet with their respective families. It was
during such interactions that they realized
they had been branded armed robbers. They
disclosed that if they were prosecuted along
with the soldiers, they would give the exact
narration of the alleged robbery incident.
SaharaReporters learnt that Mr. Dankani was
listed as a witness in the case. But on cross-
examination in April, he claimed he was forced
to come for the trial. When SaharaReporters
contacted Mr. Dankani shortly before this
report was written, he claimed to have a hazy
recollection of what went on with the bullion
van on the day of the incident. However, he
insisted that the money stolen belonged to
him.
The DSS operatives being prosecuted claimed
that the stolen money was recovered from
them in full. However, the DSS told the court
that it recovered only N96 million.
The DSS operatives are due to appear again at
the Federal Capital Territory High Court 18
when judges return from vacation.
Mr. Saraki too is on vacation with his entire
family in Ibiza, Spain. The theft of N310
million was not the only time Mr. Saraki’s
money laundering had provoked aides to steal
from him. A group of aides at his house in
Ilorin recently stole cash worth N110 million
from his bedroom in Kwara State.
We Stole Saraki's N310m Because He Wanted To Bribe Judges With It—senator’s Aide
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