President Muhammadu Buhari has
approved the redeployment of his Chief Security Officer (CSO) and accepted a
replacement.
Bashir Abubakar was Mr Buhari’s
CSO until this week when he was ordered to proceed on an immediate “strategic
course” at a university in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He was promptly replaced by Idris
Kassim Ahmed, top sources at the Presidential Villa revealed.
Whenever Mr Ahmed is not in the
villa, he is to be assisted by another State Security Service (SSS) official,
Abubakar Maikano.
Mr Buhari had two months into his
administration in July 2015 replaced his erstwhile CSO, Abdulrahman Mani, and
requested the SSS to redeploy him out of the Presidential Villa.
The president thereafter
appointed Mr Abubakar to replace Mr Mani.
Until his appointment as CSO, Mr
Abubakar was an assistant director in the Bayelsa State command of the SSS.
Mr Ahmed, the new CSO, was
deployed from the headquarters of the SSS.
Our sources, who are familiar
with the development, said the removal of Mr Abubakar was at the instance of
the Director General of the SSS, Yusuf Bichi.
“The DG wrote and informed Mr
President of the plans by the service to send the former CSO for further
training at Argentina and it appears that request was granted because a
replacement has already been named,” a source said.
Another source who asked not to
be named because of the “sensitive nature of the matter” said those around the
president have never been happy with the way the former CSO operated.
A source said those around Mr
Buhari do not like the “independent method of operation” of Mr Abubakar.
“They may not have approached the
president to complain officially but most of them do by their body language and
they did so because they know the president easily knows everything going on
around him even if he never showed it,” the source said.
For instance, we gathered that Mr
Buhari’s media team were not happy with the way Mr Abubakar expelled the State
House correspondent of Punch Newspaper, Olalekan Adetayo, without recourse to
the media team.
Mr Abubakar thereafter defended
his decision to expel the reporter, saying journalists have a responsibility to
be patriotic in reporting matters of national importance.
In an internal memo he
distributed in April 2017, to several presidency officials, including Femi
Adesina, the special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Mr.
Abubakar detailed alleged transgressions and ethical concerns observed in Mr
Adetayo’s reporting of activities of the State House, and pronounced him unfit
to continue on the beat.
“You may wish to advise the Punch
Newspaper that it reserves the right to send a more matured, professional and
patriotic representative that will work in the overall interest of the nation
rather than self-serving and parochial interests,” Mr. Abubakar, said in the
April 25, 2017 memo, which was also copied to the President and the then
Director-General of SSS, Lawal Daura.
Although Punch newspaper demanded
an apology from Mr Abubakar and vowed not to name a replacement for Mr Adetayo,
we gathered that the newspaper had sent in a replacement to the State House
beat but the former CSO failed to grant approval for the new reporter’s
credentials.
When contacted on Friday evening, the
spokesperson of Mr Buhari, Garba Shehu denied knowledge of
the new security officer.
He said he has not yet been
briefed on the matter and will revert whenever he receives any information.
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