President Muhammadu Buhari has met with former Department of State Services (DSS) Director-General Lawal Daura. Sources say the cabal are trying to bring him back to government.
Last weekend’s Aso Villa meeting is said to be in connection with a report on the August 7, 2018 invasion of the National Assembly by hooded DSS operatives.
It was also gathered that the meeting centered on the resurgence of the Boko Haram insurgency in some parts of the Northeast.
The options before the President are either to close Daura’s chapter on the invasion or re-engage him in the light of what some have considered an intelligence deficit in the fight against Boko Haram and the seeming ethno-religious tension in some states in the last three months.
The plight of Leah Sharibu and Boko Haram’s execution of Hauwa Amina Liman, one of the two kidnapped International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) workers were said to have created some intelligence gaps, which Daura was believed to have filled in the past.
A Presidency source confirmed to The Nation that the President “had audience” with the former DG of DSS. This is the first time Buhari has met the former spymaster since he left office.
”Their meeting had to do with a pending report on the invasion of the National Assembly before the President and the nation’s security apparatchik,” the source said, pleading not to be named because of the “sensitivity” of the matter.
“Apart from reading the report, the President used the opportunity to hear Daura’s side of the security siege to the National Assembly by DSS operatives,” he added.
The meeting followed what the source described as pressure from Daura’s associate including members of the President’s kitchen cabinet.
”While some want the President to foreclose Daura’s case, others have insisted that the President should re-engage the former DG of DSS…”
