By Adesina Soyooye
The Presidency and the National Security Adviser, Major General Babagana Monguno rtd, scrambled for damage control over a damning alleged statement credited to the NSA in the Media, Friday.
The Media had quoted the NSA as saying that some funds provided for the purchase of arms during the tenure of the immediate past Service Chiefs were missing with no such arms seen by the new Service Chiefs.
“No one knows what happened to the money, but by God’s grace, the President will investigate to find out whether the money was spent, and where the arms went”, the BBC Hausa Service quoted him as saying in an interview with the station.
The news spread like wild fire, and put a question mark on the President’s anti-corruption war.
Realising what damage the news had done, the NSA office, hours later, issued a statement to say he was misquoted, and what he said twisted.
The statement said: “We would like to state that the NSA was quoted out of context as he did not categorically say that funds meant meant for arms procurement were missing under the former Service Chiefs as reported or transcribed by some media outlets from the BBC interview.
“During the interview, the National Security Adviser only reiterated the Federal Government’s commitment to deal decisively with insecurity, and stated President Muhammadu Buhari’s continued commitment to provide all necessary support to the Armed Forces, including the provision of arms and equipment.”
The statement went on to say that in the interview the NSA had said to the reporter: “Mr President has provided enormous resources for arms procurement, but the orders were either inadequate or yet to be delivered and that did not imply that the funds were misappropriated under the former Service Chiefs.”
It added that the NSA had said: “Mr President is following up on the procurement process as is usual with contracts relating to military equipments. In most cases. The process involves manufacturing, due diligence, and tedious negotiations that may change delivery dates.
“All security and intelligence agencies are working together to bring an end to insecurity with the full support of Mr President and stakeholders including the media and civil society as part of a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach to address our security challenges.”
Speaking later, same Friday on a Channels Television programme, Senior Special Assistant to the President on.Media and Publicly, Garba Shehu, endorsed the NSA’s rebuttal of the statement attributed to him, saying aside from the fact that Monguno was misquoted, and would never say something like that, Shehu emphatically added: “Such a thing would never happen under President Muhammadu Buhari.”
