If you want to know who your friends are, get yourself a jail sentence, said Charles Bukowski, German-born U.S. writer. Battered by fate and torn by pain, former DSS boss, Mamman Daura, probably knows who his friends are even as you read.
Now, Daura is an ordinary Nigerian. His phones are no longer buzzing like high-pitched alarums. There is no retinue of aides, lobbyists and powerbrokers at his beck and call. He is no longer the quintessential or circumstantial love object of the political upper class. More interestingly, his gang of associates and self-confessed loyalists has depleted drastically, in the wake of his dismissal and arrest.
Funnily enough, his best friend, Alhaji Abba Kyari, the Chief of Staff to the President, couldn’t do anything to help him out. He is not pleading with President Muhammadu Buhari on his behalf because he has his own issues to deal with. You couldn’t have forgotten so soon when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) boss, Magu, ordered the arrest of Abba Kyari. Kyari was almost arrested until the quick intervention of the DSS director, Daura, who sent his boys to guard the house of the man popularly called Red Cap. Ultimately, they prevented the EFCC from arresting Kyari. They were that close!
However, Daura was disgraced out of office and taken into custody on Tuesday after ordering the deployment of SSS operatives to lay siege to the National Assembly. Daura was released on Wednesday evening from a guest house run by the State Security Service in Gwarimpa area of Abuja where he had been placed on house arrest since Acting-President Yemi Osinbajo ordered his dismissal on Tuesday. The presidency said the deployment of the SSS officials to the National Assembly was unauthorised.
Abba Kyari
The presence of masked SSS agents who prevented federal lawmakers and staff members from entering the parliament drew nationwide outrage on Friday morning. By afternoon, Mr Osinbajo, apparently incensed by the images of the ensued fracas being beamed across the world, ordered Mr Daura’s instant dismissal from service.
He was also asked to be remanded in custody, following allegations he might have committed some of the gravest heist and betrayal in Nigeria’s national security history.
He was initially reportedly taken to the Federal Special Anti-Robbery Squard facility in Guzape neighbourhood, Abuja, where he spent time answering questions for his highly controversial tenure at the secret police.
Later on, he was moved to one of the numerous guests houses run by SSS around the Federal Capital Territory. Specifically, he was detained at a building in Gwarinpa, a massive residential community filling the northwestern corridor of the capital, security sources informed of the matter said.
“He was given his phones and released to go,” a source said. “But his international passport was taken from him.”
It was not immediately clear where Mr Daura is currently putting up, but security sources said he would not be able to go under the radar given the intensity of surveillance already placed on him.