National Security Organization - 1983 - 1985

1985

Due to Umaru Shinkafi's sudden resignation, President Shagari immediately appointed Ambassador Mohammed Lawal Rafindadi as the new NSO Director General (DG). Ambassador Rafindadi was a career diplomat and pioneer officer in the Research Department intelligence unit. Unlike Shinkafi whose background was in the Nigeria police Rafindadi was an experienced intelligence officer with several foreign postings including the United kingdom, Republic of Ireland and Germany. Not considering his relatively short stay in office, Lawal Rafindadi was the most controversial director general of the NSO because of activities during his tenure and after he had been removed from office. The NSO definitely achieved the most notoriety under the leadership of Lawal Rafindadi, it has been alleged in some quarters that it was only General Buhari, Tunde Idiagbon and the Director General of the NSO that ran the government; "the NSO was superior to all other intelligence organizations".

One month after Shagari nominated Rafindadi as the DG of the NSO, precisely on the 31st of December 1983, Gen. Muhamudu Buhari toppled the civilian administration of Shehu Shagari in a military coup. Surprisingly, Rafindadi was confirmed as DG NSO by the new regime even though Babangida had tipped the DMI boss Col. Aliyu Mohammed for the position. Rafindadi, a Katsina native like Buhari had been described as belonging to the "Kaduna Mafia", a powerful group of northern elite who attended elite schools in Kaduna, "..the elite mobsters move to positions and transactions, and their main goal is to secure the supremacy of Islam in northern Nigeria for good. This requires an alliance with the army, dominated since colonial times by men from the north".

Rafindadi quickly settled down to his job as the DG of the NSO aware of the distrust the military had of him and his organization and also of the fierce rivalry that existed between himself and his opposite in the DMI, Mohammed Gusau. The Buhari government in prosecuting its war on corruption gave the NSO unprecedented powers of arrest and detention, the NSO was no longer the tame organization it had been under the civilian government. On February 3, 1984, NSO officers arrested Mrs. Marie McBroom, an American businesswoman at gunpoint. Mrs. McBroom had been in the country during the December coup and had stayed behind to conclude several deals in foodstuff and fuel for her new import/export firm. Mrs. McBroom was detained alongside another businesswoman Dorothy Davies who was arrested on similar charges of attempting to negotiate the purchase of crude oil and gasoline without first obtaining an export license, they were initially held at an interrogation cell at NSO headquarters before being transferred to Kirikiri prison later on. Davies was released and deported after 40 days in detention, McBroom was not that lucky she was held for nine months before she was finally arraigned before a four man military panel on November 30. The regime promulgated the State Security (Detention of Persons) Decree Number 2 of 1984, which gave the NSO the power to detain anyone suspected to be a security risk indefinitely. Detention under decree 2 was in 3 month tranches renewable at expiry. Another draconian decree was the decree 4 which made it a punishable offence for anyone to publish any material deemed embarrassing to a government official, two journalists from The Guardian newspapers, Nduka Irabor and Tunde Thompson were jailed under this decree. On April 11, 1984, NSO operatives arrested Irabor and Thompson. They were tried by a military tribunal headed by Justice Olalere Ayinde and charges of falsely accusing public officers of the Federal Government. This was sequel to the summons issued by the Special Military Tribunal. The summons given to them on June 2, 1984 read: Form 2 Public Officers (Protection Against False Accusation) Decree No. 4 of 1984 summon to accused. "That you Tunde Thompson and Nduka Iraboh of The Guardian Newspaper, Limited, Rutam House, Isolo on April 1, 1984 at Rutam House, Isolo in Lagos, did publish “False statement contrary to section 1(1) of the Decree No. 4 of 1984. You are therefore summoned to appear before the Tribunal mentioned above sitting at Federal High Court on the 4th day of June at the hour of 9.00 a.m in the forenoon to answer the said complaint". Also accused along with the men was their employer, Guardian Newspapers Limited.

In 1984, Rafindadi and the NSO were embrollied in controversy when the Emir of Gwandu (father of Buhari's ADC Major Mustapha Jokolo) and his entourage were allegedly allowed to clear 53 suitcases through customs on arrival from a foreign trip. Atiku Abubakar, then the customs Area Administrator at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport went on air to announce the incident in an apparent move to take credit and at the same time discredit his boss Abubakar Musa, the Director of Customs. Because of the impending currency change in the country at the time, the press went to town with a story alleging that the suitcases had contained hard currency smuggled into the country. The actual culprit at the time was Ambassador Dahiru Waziri, a friend of Rafindadi who had just returned with his family from a posting in Saudi Arabia to resume as the Chief of Protocol in the State House. Waziri had flown in on the same aircraft as the Emir of Gwandu and his luggage had been collected directly from the aircraft by a protocol officer in the Sate House and ferried directly to the State House without passing through customs. Another member of the Emir of Gwandu's party was Buhari's half brother, which led to the Emir of Daura's (Daura is Buhari's hometown) name being mentioned originally in the press instead of the Emir of Gwandu in an attempt to implicate the Head of State in the affair. In an attempt to protect his friend, Rafindadi later claimed that it was he who had received the suitcases on behalf of a colleague in the diplomatic service and that the suitcases were to have been ostensibly filled with personal effects and not hard currency as alleged by the media.

The NSO was also implicated in the much publicised "Dikko Affair" of 1984. The Dikko Affair was an unsuccessful attempt by the NSO and the Israeli business man Elisha Cohen to Kidnap and repatriate the second republic transport minster, Alhaji Umaru Dikko from the United Kingdom where he had fled to after the 1983 Buhari coup. Elisha Cohen had been doing business in Nigeria since the 60's as the country representative of Solel Boneh, an Israeli construction company. Cohen built up contacts among the senior officers in the Nigerian military including Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, in the aftermath of the attempt it was claimed in some quarters that Obasanjo's friend Gen. T.Y Danjuma had been instrumental in facilitating the mission. Cohen had impressed his Nigerian Military friends with stories of his ties to the Israeli intelligence services which were inaccurate and also unverifiable at the time because Nigeria had cut off diplomatic ties with Israel in solidarity with the OAU in the wake of the 1967 Israeli attack on Egypt. His claims were described by an associate who knew him during this period thus; "Cohen knew how to impress...He gave his listeners - Israelis and especially Nigerians - the feeling that he was a mystery man. He let it be understood that he was connected to the Mossad and the Shin Bet intelligence services or maybe even represented them in Nigeria. Among other things, he related that he worked on behalf of the Mossad in North Africa. Most of the Israelis were not very impressed by his hints and most of us understood that this was just fake showing off. But on the Nigerian army officers this made a great impression. They believed him." Cohen excitedly started planning the mission, "...for him, this was the fulfillment of all he dreamed of being and wasn't: an international conspirator and secret hush-hush missions..." Cohen assembled a team with funds provided by the Nigerian government while Major Mohammed Yussuf of the DMI was assigned to the team by the NSO. The plan was foiled when Dikko's private secretary saw members of the team abduct Dikko from the front of his house in broad daylight, she immediately alerted the police. The fall out of the failed kidnap attempt was immense, it led to a diplomatic tit-tat game of sanctions and a souring of relations between the United Kingdom and Nigeria, the international condemnation of the criminal act further tarnished the image of the new regime. The kidnap plan was known to only a few people in the intelligence services and the military, the Office of the Head of State and the DG of the NSO were its principal architects. Rafindadi's deputy, Chief Albert Horsfall had denied any knowledge of the plot.

Lawal Rafindadi's tenure as the DG of the NSO was plagued by arbitrary arrests and detentions of anybody suspected of being a threat to the regime, imagined or otherwise. This attitude crept down the ranks of the NSO and led to heavy handedness among some of the agency's operatives. A case in point is that of Brigadier Abbas Wali, a former defence attaché to the UK and Adjutant-General of the Nigerian Army. Wali was arrested in Kano by a NSO operative named Bishara and detained at the NSO office for a week without anyone knowing about the arrest including the DG of the agency, Lawal Rafindai and his deputy Albert Horsfall.

The military was not spared by the NSO either, the agency investigated Col. Aliyu Mohammed of the DMI and found him to be complicit in an import license racket, he was subsequently compulsorily retired from the army after six months in detention. During this period, Aliyu's friend and superior, Ibrahim Babangida also came under the scrutiny of the NSO, this arose because of a business dealing he and his brother in-law Sunny okogwu were involved in. Babangida and his brother in-law had wanted to set up a military hardware company called 'Black Gold' in Kaduna. The then military governor of the state, Air Vice-Marshal Usman Mu'azu wrote to the Supreme Military Council (SMC) explaining that the project was a national security risk and requested guidance on the matter. The SMC then referred the matter to the NSO for investigation. Rafindadi in his deposition to the Oputa Panel in November 2000 alleged that even before the NSO had commenced their investigations, Babangida brought a letter to the late Major-General Tunde Idiagbon, then chief of staff, Supreme Headquarters. The letter was supposed to be a clearance letter for the project under investigation purportedly written by the previous DG of the NSO, Umaru Shinkafi. Upon examination by the NSO, it turned out that the letter was actually written during Rafindadi's tenure as DG NSO, the name of the officer that signed the letter was fake and the letter was declared as a forgery. In the "Black Gold" affair, Buhari and Idiagbon had finally found a very good excuse to rid themselves of Babangida, he was slated for retirement and Idiagbon travelled to Mecca for the Hajj. Babangida, sensing the imminent end was left with no choice than to seize the initiative by planning and executing the August 1985 coup. A contemporary account from the Supreme Military Council (SMC) meeting that deliberated on the case was given by Mr. Femi Segun, a protocol officer in the State House at the time. Femi Segun recalls that "...IBB (Ibrahim Babangida) was asked to step out of the meeting which was going on because they wanted to discuss about him. For about three hours, IBB, as the then chief of army staff was just walking up and down outside without shoes and cap thinking seriously. We didn’t know what was going on but it was clear that he was asked to step out of the meeting. A few days later, he staged a palace coup".

The NSO under Rafindadi began a wire tapping and eavesdropping program where the telephone conversations of government officials, dissidents and military officials including SMC members were being listened to. Rafindadi also used his position as DG NSO and a member of the SMC to initiate a purge of senior officers in the diplomatic service for no good reason, many lost their jobs and entitlements. The NSO was also not spared from Rafindadi's purges, some officers inherited from the Shinkafi era were summarily retired, an example was Mr. Peter Odukwe the Deputy Director General of the agency.

Rafindadi's reign as the head of the infamous NSO came to an end with the August 1985 Babangida coup. Unfortunately for Rafindadi and the NSO, they were unable to predict the coup, the NSO might also have been lulled into a false sense of security by the SMC's indictment of Babangida on the Black Gold project. The NSO might also have been overwhelmed by the steady stream of coup rumours being manufactured by the DMI under Haliru Akilu, the DMI also planted a story that Col. Aliyu Mohammed was conspiring with some officers to overthrow the government, Aliyu had a very good motive for doing so which was the need to pay back the Buhari government and also to deal with Rafinadi; it was Rafindadi and his NSO who had sealed Aliyu's fate in the import scandal. As a consequence, Rafindadi might have focused too much of the NSO's time and resources on Aliyu and the many phantom coups that Akilu had been pushing out; a ruse to protect his fellow conspirators in the August 1985 coup.

With the arrival of Babangida as the new Head of State, Rafindadi was expectedly removed as DG of the NSO and detained for 40 months under house arrest at the Lagos Garrison Command (LGC) headquarters on kofo Abayomi road, in Lagos. The new regime opened up the NSO detention centre in Lagos to the press and released 101 detainees that included the likes of Senator Gbenga Ogunniya, Femi Falana and Folu Olamiti, the editor of the Sunday Tribune who was detained under decree 4; one detainee was reported to have a cracked skull. After his fall from power the new regime recalled Aliyu Mohammed from retirement, promoted him to Brigadier-General and made him the acting DG of the NSO. Rafindadi's predecessor in office, Umaru Shinkafi was also invited by the new administration to probe the activities of the NSO under Rafindadi and also make recommendations on how to reform it. In August 1986 the new national security coordinator, Brig. Aliyu Mohammed instituted a security services investigation known as "Project Room 103" which was meant to investigate cases of corruption and diversion of funds in the security services particularly the NSO. Project Room 103 discovered through one of Rafindadi's assistants at the NSO, Ambassador Iro Ladan that Rafindadi had operated at least eight foreign accounts in 5 nations or territories with a culminative balance of £1,777,984.36 as at 1985. Some of the accounts were opened under the name of Manta Sanko Ango, a cover name or legend that Rafindadi used while still active in intelligence work, he had a passport that bore this identity in addition to his diplomatic passport enabling him to use same as identification when opening the accounts.

Rafindadi was ordered by the DMI to sign a letter authorizing the transfer the funds into a holding account operated by the Nigerian government until the investigation into his affairs were concluded, the money was wired after much intrigue and was never returned to him. The new government alleged that he had corruptly enriched himself with the security vote of the NSO without providing evidence of same and also that he had maintained foreign accounts while serving in government "contrary to section 7 of the Code of Conduct Bureau and Tribunal Act, Cap 56, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria, 1990". Rafindadi was offered the opportunity to recover the funds if he could explain the source of such wealth as a civil servant but he failed to provide any such evidence. Lawal rafindadi fought unsuccessfully to get the money back through successive governments until his death on the 29 November 2007 form heart related complications.