The National Development Initiative (NDi) has commended President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for nominating Ambassador Ayodele Oke as one of the candidates for ambassadorial appointments recently forwarded to the Senate.
In a statement by its Chair on Policy and Strategic Development, Engr. Olatunji Ariyomo, FNSE, the Think Tank described Ambassador Oke as “one of the few experts in international multilateral diplomacy and strategic intelligence ever produced by Nigeria in its 65 years of nationhood.”
According to the NDi, Ambassador Oke is “a distinguished career diplomat with over three decades of multifaceted experience in international diplomacy, foreign affairs, intelligence, and national security.”
Ariyomo praised President Tinubu for what he called a meticulous and patriotic search, noting that “the challenges confronting Nigeria today demand profound knowledge, vast experience, patriotism, and the ability to mobilise our friends and partners across the world.”
Responding to renewed attempts to undermine the nomination on the basis of the 2017 incident involving the EFCC and the US$43 million operational funds discovered at the Osborne Towers in Ikoyi, Lagos, the NDi said: “We are aware of the narrative being recycled. However, from a position of knowledge, we can state categorically that the promoters of such narratives are largely driven by profound ignorance.”
The statement emphasised that Ambassador Oke was “a victim of a malicious plot” in the episode, adding: “He was targeted because of his counter-intelligence against internal sabotage and security contradictions in our war against terror. He was equally a victim of his state of origin and ethnicity – an evil we must collectively strive to purge from our national psyche.
Time has since vindicated him, as Nigeria continues to grapple with asymmetric warfare and internal destabilisation in 2025.”
According to the Think Tank, this context makes President Tinubu’s decision both significant and commendable. “Beyond the obvious merit of the nomination, Mr President has corrected a grievous public injustice. He has righted a fatal public wrong. President Tinubu has remedied an identity-based rift from 2017 in which statutory intelligence-finance procedures were criminalised simply to justify the removal of Oke as Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).”
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The NDi further noted that it “was the tradition before Oke, and it remains the tradition after Oke, that the national intelligence service – Nigeria’s equivalent of the CIA – maintains cash outside conventional due-process channels. That is the nature of intelligence work. The EFCC knew this. President Buhari, who presided over the matter, also knew this. Even the NSA at the time did not contradict Oke’s assertion that the money was meant for covert operations and NIA activities. The NSA only stated that the procedure could be abused in the future. Thus, once Oke had been removed, the President merely invited both the EFCC and Oke, and all cases against Oke were quietly discontinued. Mission accomplished.”
“Only wilful or astonishing ignorance would prevent any educated observer from seeing that the former NIA Director-General was deliberately targeted because of his seat,” the organisation concluded.
