Following the sudden resignation of Ahmed Rufai as Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA,  on Friday, President Bola Tinubu is set to return the former DG of the Agency, Ambassador Ayodele Oke as the new DG, Political Economist NG can report.

Rufai had been DG since April 2017. He was said to be the most influential of all Buhari’s appointees and the luckiest of them all.

Political Economist NG reports that Oke was sacked on October 30 2017 by President Muhammadu Buhari after he was wrongly accused of misconduct for which he was later cleared by a court of law.

Oke and his wife were later investigated by the EFCC on the order of Buhari and was subsequently sacked by Buhari in what later turned out to be a sinisterly contrived move to oust him. Below was how the plot was hatched.

In April 2017, in a  deliberately designed sting operation to create a vacuum by force and subterfuge at the NIA,  a plot said to have been initiated by Tunde Sabiu, Buhari’s privileged nephew in the Villa and two other  northerners and members of the then Aso Rock cabal,  Ibrahim Magu, the then EFCC Chairman using an insider informant from NIA operations unit,  invaded  the Lagos operational office of the NIA,  at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, which they forcefully broke into and found $43m and £34m in cash.

Later, the sum of $10m was allegedly  “removed”  out of the “recovery” when it was taken for custody at the CBN by an NIA accounts staff who was silently transferred after the staff raised a query on the missing cash.

It was gathered that even before the report of the presidential investigation was submitted and in spite of the existing court case instituted by Ayodele Eke, Buhari was misled into appointing Ahmed Rufai as the New DG NIA.

Political Economist NG learnt from those in the know that as a reward, Tunde Sabiu, who was never a member of the intelligence community, was against all protocol and public service rules given the post of Assistant Director at the NIA while still holding the post of Personal Assistant to President Buhari. He was posted to the Villa and till this day functions as a staff of the NIA.

Mr Oke who was suspended in April 2017 by Buhari, pending the outcome of investigation,  went to court to contest his indictment arising from Magu’s raid and rushed probe.

In 2023, the court cleared Ambassador Oke of any wrongdoing  and ordered  that he be reinstated as DG NIA being a statutory tenured appointment with constitutional backing.

The court order came before the elections, and removing Rufai who hails from Katsina, Buhari’s state, and reinstating Oke may be a spoiler for the APC in the North, especially given the role expected to “be played”  by Ahmed Rufai in the 2023 presidential election.

Presidency sources told Political Economist NG that President Tinubu was not happy with the manner Oke was treated as it was later proven that the so-called cash in foreign currency was not looted money but operational money belonging to the NIA and secretly warehoused in the Lagos office of the Agency.

The President, a source said, is now willing  to implement  the court order that restored Oke to his  seat.  Our reporter learnt that many operatives within the Agency are looking forward to the return of Oke whom they say was very professional during his days.

Ambassador Ayo Oke from Oyo State was sacked as the Director General of Nigeria’s National Intelligence Agency (NIA) by President Muhammadu Buhari on Monday, October 30, 2017.

He was appointed DG NIA by then President Goodluck Jonathan on November 7, 2013, succeeding Ezekiel Olaniyi Oladeji.

He studied economics and political science at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia in the United States.  He was previously the Director (Regions) at the headquarters of the NIA, before his appointment to head the agency.

Ambassador Oke is a career diplomat who was formerly at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London.