Alleged Coup D’etat: My Candid Advice To President Tinubu

By Shehu Bashir Esq.

1) Self preservation is the first law of nature. It is not allowed under that law to love others at your own detriment.

2) It does not matter if the rumoured coup d’etat plot actually happened or not, the mere hint of it is indicative of something sinister going on or coming up. Do not wave this off. This is a delicate time to ignore even the slightest hint.

3) Notwithstanding the closeness of anybody to you, or political affiliation, if any such person you regard as your ally, friend, appointee or any officer of the Armed Forces or a member of the civil service or a member of the opposition, is involved in anyway, finance or advisory or logistics, please, do not spare them. Let the law take its full course. It will be dangerous to do otherwise. There will not be any political fallout for doing the right thing.

4) In my letter to your office on 6th June, 2023, I formulated a number of national security strategies, some of which were the need to have layers of Deputy National Security Advisers, creation of National Guards, creation of Presidential Ethics Monitoring and Compliance Enforcement Directorate, PEMCED, creation of Indiscipline and Corruption Control Corps, ICCCO, among others. The operational workings of these departments are well stated in that blueprint.

5) Mr. President is becoming too lenient and too “concerned” for others. Criminals don’t appreciate leniency, they exploit it. Therefore, Mr. President will need to start applying the force of the law so that inclined criminals will stop taking him for granted and abusing the humane gestures. I am not asking you to emulate IBB’s brutality but I am also not advising you to adopt Muritala’s leniency.

6) In doing the right thing, I make bold to say that Mr. President should not bother too much about the political implications of enforcing the law the strictest way, your 2027 re-election bid is not in danger. If anything, it will sit up everyone to play by the rules.

7) Conventionally, service chiefs are not supposed to spend more than two years in office before they proceed on retirement. Keeping them there for too long breeds disharmony and anger within the ranks. It denies the incoming class the opportunity to get there and that fuels “insurbodination” within the system. What happened during the last administration where the service chiefs spent about four years caused a lot of hierarchical disruption, that should not be allowed this time.

8 ) As a matter of routine, the security personnel posted to presidential villa as details are supposed to be changed atleast every four years. I wouldn’t know if that has been done in recent years. However, Mr. President will have to direct that all the security formations within the villa, the DSS, NAIC, NPF, NIA, etc, to redeploy their overstayed personnel immediately. Nobody who has spent up to four years should remain on that post. Meanwhile, the President should set up a Special Presidential Screening Committee, SPSC to scrutinize and vet the background of anybody so posted by these agencies. Security management is not a political campaign council, it cannot be all-weather.

9) In that same order, people working at ONSA are not supposed to be just random individuals. Deployment, posting, transfer and secondment to that Office should be specially monitored by the SPSC before deployment. That Office is not a casual Office and as such, posting there should not be random and casual. I made this suggestion to the last administration and submitted a letter to Major-General Mongunu. I made the same submission to Mall. Nuhu Ribadu shortly after he was appointed.

10) There is a very serious lacuna in the regulation of internet usage and social media account ownership. There is a lot of threat and crimes being committed by faceless individuals on these platforms. It is high time social media accounts are mandated to be opened with NIN and registered phone numbers. This will automatically delete all pseudo accounts that are often used to cause crises in the country and commit all sorts of crimes.

11) In line with the above, no single person should be allowed to register and own more than two GSM numbers, one each from any two preferred networks. This will also help in fighting kidnapping, banditry, identity theft and secret planning of rebellion. It is criminal for a single person to be able to register more than ten lines each across networks.

12) The EFCC, NFIU, ICPC, NDLEA, NPF, NSCDC, NIS, NCS, NCoS should be given a supervisory ministry such as Ministry of State for Justice. These agencies have one or two similar functions in homeland security management. They need to be coordinated without interference in their administrative and operational autonomy.

13) Recruitment into security agencies should be centralized and coordinated by the office of the president. There has been too much unguided recruitments amongst some of these agencies, falling below the ethical standards. It has been “job for the boys” thing. This has to stop. Specialization of the recruits into their core fields/corps can be done at exit point. I have given details of how this can work in my blueprint of 2023 as submitted to the office of the President.

I BELIEVE, taking these steps and many others will help in enhancing the internal security and sustaining the integrity of our national security.

*GOD IS HERE*