The National Patriots’ Forum has decried what it described as “the calculated campaign of calumny targeted at rubbishing the meritorious services of the former acting Director General of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ambassador Muhammed Dauda, by some disparate elements.”

A statement, Wednesday, by the forum’s National President Comrade Isa Tijani, and National Publicity Secretary, Madu Musa Gwary, alleged a recent “orchestrated calumny was executed by a publisher of an Abuja-based magazine, The Politico, Mustapha Shehu, in a publication replete with half-truths, fictions, guesswork, and wild imaginations.”

“We know as a matter of fact that, Ambassador Muhammed Dauda, as a victim of injustice, could not have sought for the services of Mustapha Shehu, knowing his pedigree and the fact that there is no love lost between the said Shehu and other indigenes of Shehu’s birthplace, who he had always criticized,” the statement said.

On incumbent NIA DG Abubakar Rufai Ahmed, the Patriots said: “We state without fear of contradiction that the issues of his birth, his education, his marriage to a foreigner, as well as being a serial failure and subsequent retirement as Deputy Director, his double employment and other attendant scandals were issues in the social media which we had already explained and which have not been contradicted. Mustapha Shehu merely recycled facts we have already exposed to cover up his lies and to convince his paymasters that there were indeed exclusive details to him.

“For purposes of clarification, records at the Chadian birth and death registry reveals that indeed Abubakar Rufai Ahmed was born in Chad. His birth details had earlier been confirmed by the Presidency through the Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu on a radio programme we monitored. The DG himself provided in his resume to the effect that he was born and bred in Chad, he schooled there and later came to Nigeria.

“A poser for Mustapha Shehu about Rufai’s marital background may tend to resolve the marriage cover up. It is on record that the DG claims to have sought and obtained permission to marry in 1993 when he was 42 years old but was that his first marriage, coming from a society that could not have allowed him to remain unmarried until he was 42? We confirm that he was indeed married to a Moroccan before the last one.”

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