Saraki Opens Up: His SSS Men Arranged Robbery Of N310m from Money Changer in Abuja

Just four days after SR revealed that agents of the Department of State Security (DSS) assigned to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki, had stolen N310 million from funds an operator of a bureau de change was transporting to the senator, a DSS source has revealed that the heist was led by Abdulrasheed Hamidu Maigari and George Mwatapwa Ibbi, two top members of Saraki's security detail. 

Mr. Hamidu became part of his security detail shortly after Saraki was elected Senate President.

A credible source said that, “He [Mr. Hamidu] was the one who organized other participants in the robbery, including the soldiers.”

In addition to the DSS agents, seven soldiers also took part in the operation. SaharaReporters had exclusively disclosed that the agents and soldiers ambushed the owner of a bureau de change and forced him to hand over N310m out of the funds he was going to deliver to Mr. Saraki.

Mr. Hamidu, who hails from Dungo local government area in Taraba State, is a younger brother to Uba Maigari Hamidu, the deputy governor of Taraba State during former Governor Jolly Nyame’s administration.

The high-profile robbery took place on November 20, 2015, but both the DSS and Mr. Saraki worked in tandem to conceal the identity of the robbery suspects in order to spare the embattled senator from further public embarrassment. After SaharaReporters broke the news, Mr. Saraki’s media team quickly reached major newspapers and bloggers in Nigeria to ensure that the senator’s involvement in the scandal was concealed.

In addition to the political cost to Mr. Saraki, the revelation that the stolen cash belonged to him bolstered reports about Mr. Saraki’s penchant for bribing judges in order to scuttle his trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal.

SaharaReporters had recently revealed that Mr. Saraki had pressured officials at the Central Bank of Nigeria to pay him and another senator a sizeable hush amount after the two senators stumbled on information that former President Goodluck Jonathan and former National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki (ret.), had made numerous illicit withdrawals of funds at the CBN. Since our publication, a source at the CBN as well as a security detail confirmed the hush payment and named Senator Andy Uba, a close ally of Mr. Saraki’s, as the other recipient of the hush funds.

A note released by a CBN official and published by SaharaReporters showed that Mr. Dasuki withdrew more than $600 million from the CBN between the first week of February and the last week of March 2015. Mr. Jonathan, through the former NSA, diverted the illegally withdrawn cash to fund his futile reelection campaign.

The latest revelation that Mr. Saraki was using bureau de change operators to launder funds is consistent with findings made by police investigators who have probed the senator’s record as a state governor.

In a press release, Mr. Saraki denied ownership of the funds stolen from a bureau de change, claiming that the DSS and the police had reached the same conclusion after investigating the heist. According to him, law enforcement investigators had determined that the funds belonged to an unnamed bureau de change operator.

Also, the Senate President sent a press statement to a few Nigerian editors where he admitted that the assailants were members of his security detail. Curiously, none of the media houses ever reported that fact, suggesting that they acted on Mr. Saraki’s plea to conceal that information.

A DSS source punctured Mr. Saraki’s denial, telling SaharaReporters that the police were not involved in the investigation of the high-profile heist until much later. “The Director General [of the Department of State Security], Lawal Daura, kept the police away from the case. Also, you can see that the police are yet to issue a statement relating to the incident apparently because they were working to a predetermined outcome,” said the source.

When SaharaReporters reached the spokesman to the Senate President earlier today, he stated that the Commissioner of Police in charge of the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja was directly handling the investigation. He also claimed that the police had issued a statement, but when our correspondent prodded him to provide a link to the statement, he referred us to a report written by Thisday newspaper, claiming it contained the police statement.

But a look at the report by Thisday pointed to a possible cover-up by the DSS and the Senate President. Thisday newspaper reported the FCT Commissioner of Police, Wilson Inalegwu, as stating, “In the course of the investigation, we were able to get the names and identities of some of them [the suspects in the heist]. Unfortunately, two of the DSS operatives are attached to the Senate president. The police contacted the Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the Senate president. But rather than sending the operatives to the police for interrogation, he sent them to the DSS office.”

In fact, another source who initially briefed SaharaReporters on the theft disclosed that the only reason the DSS made a public statement was because the operator of the bureau de change has close links with a former military head of state.