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From Godwin Tsa, Abuja
A coalition of civil society and ethnic groups have called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, SAN, to sack and prosecute the Director General of the Department of State Security Services, DSS, Mr. Yusuf Magaji Bichi over alleged plot to frame up the Governor of Central Bank, CBN, Godwin Emefiele for terrorism charges.
Already, the groups have already disclosed that the DSS had secretly filed a suit at the Federal High Court marked FHC/ABJ/CS/2255/2022, to legalize its plot.
The groups comprising human right lawyers, chairmen of political parties, Civil Society groups, Ethnic Youth Leaders including Arewa Youth Consultative movement operating under the auspices of Coalition of National Interest Defenders raised the alarm at a press conference in Abuja.
Addressing a joint world press conference, the Convener of the Coalition, Tochukwu Ohazuruike revealed that the Security agency filed a motion in Court accusing the CBN governor of terrorism financing and other crimes it described as economic crimes of national security dimension.
The group also accused the State Service of not informing the President of the investigative report which showed them that Mr. Emefiele was a terrorist and also that the allowed Mr. Emefiele to travel out of the country with the President and have unrestricted access to the President.
Challenging the veracity of the claims of the SSS the Coalition said if truly the DG SSS believed his claims, he would not have allowed Mr. Emefiele anywhere near the President but that by allowing Emefiele travel with the President, it showed the DG SSS did not believe Emefiele was indeed a terrorist and this therefore meant that the claims of the SSS in Suit No FHC/ABJ/CS/2255/2022 between State Security Service and Godwin Emefiele was made with the sole purpose of forcefully and wrongfully removing the CBN Governor from office.
“Sometime within the first week of this month, we intercepted credible intelligence about a plot at certain high places in government to stop the Central Bank Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele by all means and his policy to redesign the Naira with its January 31st, 2023 deadline and also to put a stop to the cash withdrawal limit policy of the bank scheduled to start on the 9th January, 2023.
“The plotters admitted that their major challenge was that the President had fully approved the policies but agreed that the approval would not deter them. They also agreed that they would not be able to get the President to bring to effect Section 11 (2)(f) of the Central Bank (Establishment) Act.
They had earlier tried to undermine the President by attempting to amend the CBN Act and the Currency Decimal Act overnight in the House of Representatives but failed.
While we monitored they began to recruit people to join in their plot. They recruited allies even at the highest level of the security architecture, legislature and executive arm of government of our country. Directly to coordinate this operation of undermining the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and a policy publicly known to enjoy the full support and approval of the President is the Director General of the State Security Service.
Dear Nigerians, on the 7th December, 2022 just 24 hours after the CBN officially announced the cash withdrawal deposit policy, a barrage coordinated actions were taken, all targeted at ensuring that the Mr. Godwin Emefiele was removed from office or ceased to be the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.
These activities included activating the filing of cases against the Mr. Emefiele to ensure he ceases to be in office as the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria latest by the end of the year as they resolved. We believe that the plot furhter included carrying out of activities which would have put the life and person of Mr. Emefiele in grave danger. The coincidental travel of Mr. Emefiele to the United States of America with President Muhammadu Buhari may have stalled this aspect of the plan.
It has taken us some time, diligent and careful monitoring and resources to discover that on the said 7th December, 2022, a Motion was filed in the FCT High Court with the major target of getting the CBN Governor out of office. The Motion had suit number M/294/2022
Now listen careful to this
On the same 7th December, 2022 another Exparte application was secretly filed at the Federal High Court Abuja this time directly by the State Security Service. The Suit is between the State Security Service v Godwin Emefiele. Our intelligence which discovered this shocking development showed the suit was filed at the court without disclosing the full identity of Mr. Emefiele to the Court and working on the premise that the court would grant an order for the Service to arrest and detain Mr. Emefiele for a minimum of 60 days hiding under section 66 of the Terrorism Prevention and Prohibition Act 2022.
That the State Security Service, an agency of Federal Government secretly approached the Federal High Court Abuja, and filed an exparte application against Mr. Godwin Emefiele, the Central Bank of Nigeria Governor where they accused him of being a terrorist. It is utterly shocking and shameful for the SSS to fabricate such bogus charges only in a bid to force an innocent man out of office. We have with us the Suit number which at this moment I will read it out, so that Nigerians and Mr. President can send their people to rush to the Federal High Court to get their copies and see this evil with their own eyes, the suit number is FHC/ABJ/CS/2255/2022.
The groups, therefore, called on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Attorney General of the Federation to set the process in motion to immediately suspend, arrest, investigate and prosecute the DG SSS Mr. Yusuf Magaji Bichi.
