Many years after these public servants left office, no one has heard anything about them again. ELEOJO IDACHABA in this report asks where they could be now.
Aliyu Mohammed Gusau
Gen. Aliyu Mohammed Gusau is a retired army officer who served at many senior levels of security and military duties.
His last public appointment was as minister of defence and national security adviser (NSA) to two different presidents.
He was at various times Chief of Army Staff, headed different intelligence agencies and was commandant of the Nigerian Defence Academy (NDA) in Kaduna.
With wide influence in both civilian and military circles, Gusau played a central role in ensuring that the transition to democracy in May 1999 went smoothly.
He was the NSA in the crucial period of Nigeria when former political office holders in the armed forces were retired by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in June 1999.
According to reports, he did this by helping President Obasanjo to assume control of the armed forces as a civilian president.
He remained the NSA during most of Obasanjo’s presidency, but left office to compete in the 2006 Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primaries for presidency where he came third.
On March 8, 2010, then acting president, Goodluck Jonathan, reappointed him as NSA where he represented the country at many forums.
For example, while speaking at a seminar in April 2010, Aliyu said Nigeria’s legal system seems to promote crime in which the law enforcement agencies appeared overwhelmed.
He also said that efforts to fight corruption were perceived as selective and ineffective, even as some agencies of government has credibility problems since their leaders had been accused of corruption.
According to Rudolf Okonkwo while writing about Gusau, he said, “For the record, the primary reason for Gusau’s return is President Jonathan’s last ditch effort to placate Babangida and Obasanjo, all friends and allies of Gusau.
With Gusau in place, he hopes to also assure the north that their interest will be taken care of while he runs out the clock for another four years when power will definitely return to the north.
As is always the case, the interest of Gusau is being interchanged with the interest of the north. As NSA, Gusau is one of the most powerful people in Nigeria. He knows what ordinary Nigerians do not know.
He is in control of both the military and civilian intelligence network; so he can make things happen. He knows who is writing fake cheques and who is stealing Nigeria’s money.
Obviously, more than the King, Obasanjo, knows. That is why he is something behind the throne that is bigger than the king.” That is how much he is perceived by some people.
In recent times, the retired army General seems to have retired into a quiet life even as age is no longer in his side.
Martins Elechi
Martins Elechi was the former governor of Ebonyi state on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) whose administration, according to political watchers, did not perform well as against his campaign promises for infrastructure turn-around in the new state.
His lieutenants however were quick to point out that political elites within the ranks of PDP in the state were responsible for his perceived poor outing during his administration.
His tenure, however, ended in 2015 having failed to get the ticket of his party for a second tenure on account of the allegation of under-performance. In 2017, information had it that he had joined the All Progressives Congress (APC) in what analysts say was a grand design to evade criticism over his poor outing in the state.
He however defended his action which he blamed on injustice and what he called lack of internal democracy in PDP. He said, “The change we all clamour for is finally here with us; we are heralding the dawn of a new Ebonyi politics.
The APC has come to salvage the decaying political values caused by the misgovernance of one man who has lost focus on what political leadership entails,” he said.
Since he left office in 2015 and subsequent movement to the ruling APC, nothing has been heard from him anymore.
Mohammed Magoro
Mohammed Magoro is a retired General from the Nigerian Army who was twice a minister under Generals Obasanjo and Buhari’s military regimes. He enrolled at the Nigeria Military Training College in 1963.
A member of the Zuru ethnic minority, he was a graduate of Bida Provincial School where he was a classmate of the late Mamman Vatsa and Ibrahim Babangida.
After his retirement from the military in 1995, he went into private service and thereafter became the chairman of Ocean and Oil Services Ltd, a petroleum marketing company created through the privatisation of Unipetrol Nigeria Plc in which Ocean and Oil Services bought a major share. In November 2001, Magoro was an influential member of the Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
In the run up to the April 2007 elections for Kebbi state governorship position, he was at first declared candidate of the party under PDP but later was replaced by Alhaji Saidu Dakingari. When Dakingari went on to be elected, the rival parties disputed the validity of the election.
In the April 2011 elections he was elected senator to represent Kebbi-south constituency in the National Assembly. That was his last major public office so far.
Under him as internal affairs minister, Nigeria witnessed mass exodus of foreign nationals like those from Ghana (in the popular phrase Ghana Must Go), Sierra Leone and Benin Republics.
A popular magazine put the scene in 1985 thus, “The refugees began to mass at the crossing posts along Nigeria’s western border with Benin. Their mattresses, chairs, plastic containers and enamel cooking pots spilled out of trailers, trucks and minibuses.
Many of those who made it across the border had first to surrender any supplies of sugar, milk and detergents officially described as ‘essential commodities’ to Nigerian immigration and customs officials.
No one was permitted to leave with more than $22 worth of naira. The scenes at posts along Nigeria’s borders with Niger and Chad were much the same as streams of anxious refugees were forced to return to their countries against their will.” Since he left the Senate in 2015, not much has been heard of him again.
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