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The sacked Director-General of the Department of State Services, Lawal Daura, has been accused of serially betraying President Muhammadu Buhari for money.
His former assistant, Abdulwahab Abdulrahman, who retired as a senior DSS official, claimed in a Premium Times interview that Daura also betrayed Buhari by serving as a mole for Senate President Bukola Saraki.
“He will go and get information on plans for (Senate president) Bukola (Saraki) and then leak it to him,” he said.
Abdulrahman said he quit the agency in 2016 because of the scale of corruption and abuse there.
Mr Daura, who has been DSS boss, since 2015, was fired on Tuesday by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo after he ordered a blockade of the National Assembly.
Mr Abdulrahman said President Buhari never knew Daura until he was introduced to him by the late Senator Mustapha Bukar in 2015. He then disclosed how Daura wormed his way into the heart of President Buhari’s cousin, Mamman Daura.
He claimed that after Daura was appointed in July 2015, “Daura was receiving money from everyone including the president’s enemies”.
Mr Abdulrahman said when they resumed, they always closed late at work, often at about 2am.
“What we were doing was mostly: receiving Ghana must go filled with cash brought by enemies of government to him.”
“The rate of corruption on that fourth floor was too much and the president doesn’t deserve this,” he said.
“He will go and get information on plans for (Senate president) Bukola (Saraki) and then leak it to him,” he said.
Similar allegation emerged Tuesday after Mr Daura’s removal, with many administration supporters accusing him of working for Mr Saraki against the government.
Recalling that it was memos from the Daura-led DSS that stopped the Senate confirmation of Acting Chairman of the EFCC, Ibrahim Magu, Abdulrahman said Daura wrote against Magu because he refused to share information on high profile cases with him.
“Magu is a smart officer and he knew Daura wanted to use such information to extract money from people. He told Daura to his face that I can’t report to you, I only report to the president who appointed me,” Abdulrahman said.
On Mr Daura’s career history, Mr Abdulrahman said the former DG was sacked from the DSS originally before his reappointment by Mr Buhari because he was caught siphoning diesel from the SSS Academy in Kaduna.
“Before then, he was almost sacked when he was State Director in Lagos. Tinubu, who was governor donated 20 vehicles to aid the work of the service in the state; Fashola, who is Minister now, was the Chief of Staff at the time, Lawal Daura took all the vehicles to Kano and sold them off,” he claimed.
He also said Mr Daura had to be secretly taken away in Edo state because of how he was misusing staff stipends.