The National Development Initiative (NDi) has commended President Bola Tinubu for nominating Amb Ayodele Oke, as one of the candidates for an ambassadorial post recently forwarded to the Senate.
The NDi Chair on Policy and Strategic Development, Olatunji Ariyomo, said this in a statement on Friday in Abuja.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Oke is a former Director-General of National Intelligence Agency (NIA)
Ariyomo described 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 him, Oke is a distinguished career diplomat with over three decades of multifaceted experience in international diplomacy, foreign affairs, intelligence, and national security.
Ariyomo praised Tinubu for what he called a meticulous and patriotic search.
He noted that the challenges confronting Nigeria today demanded 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 43 million dollars operational funds discovered at the Osborne Towers in Ikoyi, Lagos, he said the narrative was a malicious plot.
“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,” he said.
Ariyomo emphasised that Oke was a victim of a malicious plot in the episode.
He added that he was targeted because of his counter-intelligence against internal sabotage and security contradictions in the war against terror.
“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),” he stated.
He further noted that it was the tradition before Oke, and it remained the tradition after Oke, that the national intelligence service maintained 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,” he said. (NAN)
