By Nnamdi Elekwachi
I do not know why David Hundeyin, an exiled Nigerian investigative journalist, profoundly seeks disclosures on Tinubu’s dossiers securely and confidentially held in the US by the CIA, as he alleged. But my little understanding of the dynamics and workings of international politics pushes me to curiously ask: what does the CIA know about Bola Tinubu, as a foreign national, that it does not want Nigerians to know?
During his exile in the same America, Nasir El Rufai, who was watch listed during the Yar’Adua years, furnished, I think, the same CIA with information on Yar’Adua, a sitting president. El Rufai had been with Yar’Adua, then Nigerian president, at Barewa College in Kaduna. He, El Rufai, told the CIA, that the late Nigerian president used marijuana, smoked cigarettes, was not a ladies’ man, and had a serious skin issue as a college boy, all of which were used in crafting a dossier on a serving Nigerian president.
What El Rufai did was felonious and treacherous, a crime against the Nigerian state, yet the diminutive Kaduna public servant – without an official state or presidential pardon – managed to return home to be elected twice as governor of Kaduna State following the death of Umar Musa Yar’Adua. One may ask: why did the Nigerian intelligence agencies, especially the DSS whose duty it is to protect the Nigerian president, not go after El Rufai who acknowledged his romance with an American intelligence agency in his personal memoir The Accidental Public Servant, which I read in 2013?
It Is a known fact that in order to improve intelligence harvesting on any subject, the CIA, working outside America, or the FBI working within, would go the extra mile, including using spies, detectives, and espionage agents to get secret information. And in holding their findings confidentially secure as classified information, public knowledge is restricted. Now, David Hundeyin was not successful in his pursuit to make Tinubu’s alleged drug cases become a public record.
In a post he recently shared on his X handle, Hundeyin claimed that the CIA had alleged through a court memorandum that Tinubu is its ‘asset’ and that the nature and demands of their job require that Tinubu’s case not be published so as not to erode public confidence. If this is true, then it places a national security risk on Nigeria as a federation because a ‘CIA asset’ is an individual or organisation helping the CIA by providing certain information about a subject of investigation to the agency.
Does the CIA have Tinubu in its clutches? We should worry.
Following the Nigerian presidential election last year, President Joe Biden of America, even though not vocally and verbally critical of the election, was hesitant in sending a congratulatory message to President-elect Tinubu, as he was then. Other American allies spent a day, some two or even more before sending congratulations to Tinubu.
Later, a section of the Western media houses was running stories on how Nigeria elected ‘a drug baron,’ ‘a political fixer’ and all that. I kept wondering why those articles were being churned out on the Nigerian President-elect. Then, what happened next was an attempt to deodorise Tinubu for which reason Lai Mohammed, Buhari’s serving information and communication minister, travelled to faraway Washington, in America, for a press briefing wherein an attempt to launder Tinubu’s image and save Nigeria’s face, the minister accused Peter Obi of ‘inciting Nigerians’ and ‘treason’!
Later in May of 2023, Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, phoned Tinubu, after three long months of silence, and spoke on the need to preserve the Nigeria-America relations, including people-to-people ties and other areas of shared interest. That was the formal commencement of Nigeria’s relations with America under Tinubu, at least something more expressive, which made relations between the two countries move from apparent non-recognition to a full and official recognition just a few days to the swearing-in ceremony on May 29, 2023.
Not congratulating Tinubu immediately may not be because of the perception Biden or America’s government has that his election appeared rigged or dirty, it could be a calculated diplomatic manoeuvre, a bait and gambit to get the newly elected president of the largest democracy in Africa into the foreign policy orbits of the West. Tinubu indeed courted the West and also sought their recognition; and so, when that recognition finally came, it was not without a cost.
If indeed America has those records, it has a diplomatic cost and as well a political consequence for Nigeria as a sovereign state. In fact, having a president who is a ‘CIA asset’ places latency on Nigeria’s sovereignty and widens America’s soft power leverage in all relations with Nigeria because Nigeria’s national interest could be dependent on, if not totally subsumed into America’s interest. The point I am driving home here is that Nigeria’s national interest and foreign policy goals are still largely indeterminate and undefined because they lack independence.
When, for example, Tinubu tried to commit Nigeria to a war in Niger Republic because there was an unconstitutional change of government in the West African nation, I perceived the irony in the whole affair and warned that it is ironic for the same West whose media houses attacked Tinubu and condemned his election to use the same man as a proxy under the banner of Ecowas. Declaring war against Niger Republic was like declaring a war against Northern Nigeria because such a war would have violated pre-existing historical ties in the Lake Chad Basin where the ancient Kanem Borno Empire (covering parts of what is today Cameroon, Niger, and Northeast Nigeria) flourished long before artificial lines were drawn on a map and then called borders somewhere in Berlin.
What did the West, in this instance France, achieve with Tinubu in Niger? Dismemberment of Ecowas; simple. Today, we have the Alliance of Sahel States (ASS or AES) comprising Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger who are calling Ecowas’ bluff? But we know that before that time, Ecowas ranked as the most powerful supranational bloc in Africa.
To further understand how soft power works, now this: a few months ago, Nigeria had in custody one Mr. Tigran Gambaryan, the executive of Binance Holdings Ltd, an American citizen. The case was associated with money laundering and forex activities that led to the crash of the naira for which Nigeria sought $10 billion in damages. Later the news had it that Nigeria was set to unconditionally release the suspect. And it came to pass as predicted; all the charges against Gambaryan were dropped simply on humanitarian grounds.
Secretary Blinken even released a statement hailing the release as a ‘positive outcome’ likely to deepen partnership and ‘law enforcement cooperation’ between Nigeria and the US. So, from being paraded as a suspect Gambaryan was flown back home on health grounds on a special jet ‘outfitted with medical supplies.’ It was because America was involved, not because Gambaryan was not guilty as charged. If it were Iran or Turkey, a prisoner swap deal would have happened for that release to be secured, but Nigeria only gave in to diplomatic pressure.
If Nigeria knows a thing about reciprocity in diplomacy or operates an independent foreign policy, maybe there would have been a different outcome. Would America release Ramon Olorunwa Abba, known as Hushpuppi, to Nigeria on humanitarian grounds? Would Britain do the same for us with Senator Ike Ekweremadu on medical grounds? I do not seek to establish guilt on the part of the American, no, but if roles were to be reversed today with a Nigerian facing charges lighter than Gambaryan’s in America, would the US have forfeited, say $10 billion like Nigeria did? That is where I am looking at it from.
I do not know why David Hundeyin is seeking these disclosures, but I look at the whole thing from a foreign policy perspective, where latency may have been placed on Nigeria’s sovereignty if indeed the Tinubu records exist.
Nnamdi Elekwachi, a historian, writes from Umuahia, Abia State.
