Tag: Badeh

Fortunately, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh was not a villain. He was never so pronounced by the courts. When last week he died a cheap death, a common feature of contemporary Nigeria, he died a victim of our dysfunctional system that couldneither protect him nor our children routinely carted away like sheep from their schools by insurgents, farmers killed or driven away from their farms by suspected migrating herdsmen, travellers kidnapped for rituals or ransoms, and of course thousands who die a slowdeath following consumption of fake drugs. Our cities and villages are taking the form of Hobbesian society where life is nasty, cheap and short.

With Badeh’s death,we areall losers, starting with a nation that invested heavily in sending him to the best military academies across the world; the government andits security apparatus who on account of their turf wars sealed Badeh’s fate by leaving him at the mercy of those he was said to have offended and of course the judiciary which, by its penchant to resort to technicalities instead of substance,made sure that for Badeh, justice delayed was justice denied.

Alex SabunduBadeh was a four-star flag officer of the Nigerian Air force. Before he was killed on December 18, 2018, he had served as the 18th Chief of Air Staff and the 15th Chief of Defence Staff of the armed forces of Nigeria. He did hisundergraduate pilot training at Vance Air Force Base of the United States Air Force. He passed through the Armed Forces Command and Staff as well as the National War College. Besides a M.Sc. degree in Strategic Studies from the University of Ibadan, he also attended Safety International Institute at Teterboro in New York for a course in simulator recurrence,all at taxpayers’ expense. He laterserved asthe Director National Military Strategy at the National Defence College, Director of Research and Chief of Policy Plans, Nigeria Air Force Headquarters. In other climes, Badeh would have remained an asset to the armed forces even in retirement.

Badeh was alleged to have committed the most heinous sin in the military – betraying his foot soldiers,(a General’s greatest assets)whose welfare and safety he was alleged to have traded for personal gains.He allegedly diverted about N3.9b, funds meant for procurement of arms and for the welfare of his soldiers towards procuring houses for himself and his children.

According to EFCC,parts of the funds was allegedly used to buy mansion at No 6 Ogun River Crescent, Maitama worth N1.1 billion; shopping plaza at Plot 1386 Oda Crescent, Cadastral Zone A, Wuse 11, Abuja worth N1.6bn; set of duplexes in Wuse 11 for his children, Alex Badeh Jnr and Kam Badeh worth N260m and N330m respectively. EFCC also alleged about N150m was paid to Platinum Universal Projects for the renovation and furnishing of Badeh Jnr’s house. Badeh’s N150m personal house in Yola, Adamawa State was also said to have come from the diverted fund.

And in court, the Director of Finance and Account of the Nigerian Air Force (NAF), Air Commodore AliyuYishau (retd.) Yishau revealed how the former Chief of Defence Staff converted N558 million from funds meant for the NAF into dollars for his personal use.The witness also narrated how he  used dollar equivalent of the sum of N1.4billion removed from the accounts of the Nigerian Air Force to purchase a mansion situated at No. 6, Ogun River Street, Off Danube Street, Maitama, Abuja

Then Anna Awe Akuson, another witness in the N3.9billion fraud trial as far back as Wednesday, February 28, 2018 told Justice OkonAbang of the Federal High Court sitting in Maitama, Abuja how a search conducted on a property allegedly belonging to Alex Badeh, the defendant led to the recovery of $1million suspected to be proceeds of illicit deals.

But the lawyers slowed down Badeh’s trial using one technical issue after the other until Justice OkonAbang was forced to orderBadeh to open his defence on January 16 and 17. That for Badeh turned out a bridge too far to cross.

In the courts and in the courts of public opinion, the stakes could not have been higher for Badeh especially when the sufferings of thousands of those who were driven from their homes in the 19 LGAs taken over by Boko Haram insurgents and hundreds of our ill-equipped soldiers who died on the battle field were attributed toBadeh’srecklessness. Badeh appeared to have assaulted sensibilities of both civilians and soldiers.

But how we or  President Buhari’s round pegs in square holes in the police, defence and internal affairs ministries where  inflammatoryrhetoricare often substituted for deep  thinking ,feel does not attract death penalty. As an accused, Badeh had the right to life. It is for this reason many believe it was too much a coincidence that the four soldiers detailed to protect Badeh were said to be some kilometres away from where an Air Chief Marshall was killed like a chicken.

But the Nigerian police whose overzealous IG thinksit is his responsibility to pursue perceived enemies of thepresident seems to have started on a wrong footing by swallowing hook and line, the claim by Rabione of the suspects, that they killed Badeh because of “information that Badeh was in possession of a huge sum of money which he wanted to use in purchasing a parcel of land in Nasarawa State”.

According to Rabi, after the killing “we opened the car and found a bag of money and went with it. When they opened the bag, the money was beyond what I had ever seen before”.For now, Rabi and the police seem to have agreed to keep the figures or where recovered funds are warehoused secret.

There are more unanswered questions. IfBadeh was killed in the evening between Koso and Kugwaru communitieson December 18, 2018 while returning from his farm, what would he still be doing with humongous amount he was supposed to have used to buy land?

Worse, Badeh’s family has dismissed Rabi and the police narrative as a subterfuge to cover the tracks of Badeh’sreal killers. They insisted Badeh, whose salary and pensions account had been frozen and who on account of this could not meet his financial obligations to his domestic staff, his farm workers and the Abuja Environmental Protection Board that had refused to clear huge refuse dump at his house in Abuja, couldn’t have been carrying huge sums of money as at the time he was killed.

With the confiscation of most of Badeh and his sons’ properties regarded as proceeds of fraud by EFCC, the question that should ordinarily interest the police is who stands to gain from Badeh’s death? Unfortunately, the over enthusiasm of the police to carry out the now stalled parade of two of Badeh’s suspected assailants while the rest are still at large seems to have betrayed their mind-set.

For critics of President Buhari’s security apparatus, the pursuit of Rabi’s narrative alone amount to chasing shadows. Nigerians look up to the president on whose desk the buck stops to ensure Badeh’s killing does not follow the pattern of other unresolved high profile killings in the country.