Recently, there have been questions regarding the whereabouts of these former senior public servants long after they left office. Their stewardships are hereby presented; ELEOJO IDACHABA writes.
Lawrence Onoja
Maj.-Gen. Lawrence Onoja (retd.) is indisputably one of the military officers styled ‘Babangida boys’. He was a two-time military administrator of Plateau state from 1986 to ‘88 and Katsina from 1988 to 1989 under President Ibrahim Babangida. He later became the Principal Staff Officer to Gen. Sani Abacha as Chief of Defence Staff. Later, in his career, he was arrested for alleged involvement in a coup attempt against Abacha in 1998, but was set free because there was no evidence to nail him to the said crime until he retired from the army in 1998. As a military officer, he held various appointments including Defence Adviser at the Nigerian Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
He was also at a time the Principal Staff Officer to Gen. Babangida shortly before he was appointed as military administrator of Plateau in July 1988. While in Plateau, he was saddled with the responsibility of managing the religious crisis between Christians and Muslims; a development that made him to threaten pulling down all public places of worship in order to reduce the growing tension in the state. He however did not carry out the threat before he was moved to Katsina.
In Katsina, he was adjudged as a transparent man because of his honesty in the way he governed the state. On leaving the military in 1998, he joined politics and was appointed a member of the board of Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). In the 2003 general election, he was a governorship candidate in Benue state on the platform of United Nigeria Peoples Party (UNPP), but lost it. Again, in 2006, he contested for senatorial position against the candidacy of Senator David Mark but narrowly lost. In April 2009, former President Umaru Yar’Adua named him as chairman of the National Institute for Sports.
This Benue state-born retired army officer who fought in the Nigeria Civil War recalled his experiences during his last 70th birthday saying, “Surviving the war was a miracle of God. A lot of Idoma officers who were with me in Port Harcourt, were killed. I remember when they brought the dead bodies of George Lawani (younger brother to former deputy governor of Benue state), Col. Shambe, a Tiv man, Francis Oluma, a native of Adoka here in Benue. I was very young then.
“One day, I just received a call from the late Benjamin Adekunle (Black Scorpion) in front of his office. I could remember vividly that what was written on the steel helmet in front of his office was ‘enter my office at the pain of death.’
“Adekunle posted me to meet my kinsman, Ignatius Obeya who was the then Brigadier Commander at Itu, Cross River state.
“At that time, you couldn’t connect Port Harcourt from Calabar because there was no road. You had to go through Aba, which was already held by Biafra.
“So, we had to connect through Igwenga to Abak, then to Oron before finally crossing to Calabar.
“I reported to Brig Obeya and I was part of the operation from crossing Calabar to Itu through a river called Ikoto Okpora. I was made a Brigade Major to Obeya to ensure that the three battalions in the Brigade were effectually controlled and commanded to fight the war.
“We were facing a place called Arochukwu across the water at the time. The Biafran were on the other side while the Nigerian troops were on this side. It was very funny because every morning, we would wake up and talked to ourselves across the water. The Biafra soldiers would tell us that ‘Gowon and Ojukwu are enjoying themselves in Aburi and we are busy fighting ourselves, please give us some food’; we would then throw cigarettes and sometimes beer to them across the water.
“But after an hour, we would start shooting at ourselves. I went through all this and came out alive; I think at 70, I would say I am a fulfilled man,” he recalled.
At the moment, it’s not clear where this former General is and what he is doing.
Suleiman Adokwe
Senator Suleiman Adokwe was elected into the Senate to represent the people of Nasarawa South Constituency in 2007 on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He is from Alago nation, but of Idomoid extraction. Prior to his stewardship in the Senate, he had excellent public service career having worked in Nasarawa state civil service for years and rose to the position of permanent secretary before he retired. Between 2003 and 2006, he was appointed into the cabinet of Abdullahi Adamu where he served as the commissioner for information.
However, while in the Senate, he was on the committees on senate services, security and intelligence, Navy, national planning, capital markets, among others. Although said to be a brilliant lawmaker, but report had it that he never sponsored a bill on the floor of the Senate, according to a mid-term report on senators by a major media house way back in 2009. Senator Adokwe was however a supporter of labor unions because, according to him, “They can offer constructive criticism of the government as long as their leaders avoid corruption and support democracy within the unions.”
In 2011, he was re-elected, but as the election petition matter lasted, he lost the bid to return for the third time in 2015. As a result of this, he went to the election petition tribunal sitting in Lafia, but the tribunal dismissed his petition for lacking in merit.
Since then, this former lawmaker has maintained a low profile such that no one knows where he could be presently.
Femi Ajayi
Olufemi Ajayi is the former executive secretary of Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) up until 2015. Appointed in 2014 by former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, he replaced Oluwola Oluleye, its erstwhile executive secretary. Ajayi, before the appointment, was the director general of National Drugs Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
This Ekiti state-born technocrat who headed the nation’s institution charged with the mandate of training local manpower for the oil and gas industry once allayed fears that the scholarship scheme the agency embarks upon on behalf of the government to train Nigerian youths and researchers was cancelled for inexplicable reasons in 2015. While explaining the true position of things, he said, “The PTDF has not cancelled the scheme. The point I have made is that as much as possible, we want to increase capacity-building locally here and because of that even our training partners, we have told them that going forward, people that we would be favourably disposed to, are those partners who are ready to encourage our domestication drive. We are asking them to come and set up shops in our country here to do what they are doing for us over there here.”
According to him, cancelling the scheme is not likely to ever happen because of the importance of encouraging interaction.
“In fact, we are not likely to be able to cancel it outright because don’t forget, there is a need for intellectual interaction and diffusion even within the country. If you bring scholars who were trained in the US, Germany and the ones that were trained in the UK, the mix is the best you can have and the better for you because we are combining the expertise from so many places.” His whereabouts long after he left PTDF is not yet known.
