Fidelis Nwangwu and his Tale of Lies against Dambazau
By Edwin Uhara
I read the fake news article against the Minister of Interior, retired Lieutenant General Abdulrahman Dambazau by one Fidelis Nwangwu; a notorious hireling who specializes in spewing trash in the name of article writing.
Honesty speaking, Mr Nwangwu is a less-endowed hireling who in his desperate bid to satisfy the interest of his paymasters always concoct lies, false narratives, unverified claims and non-existing tales and push them out as news articles.
Regrettably, one of the distasteful things that have happened to the cherished field of journalism is the entrance of fake news material in to the media industry fuelled by a concept called citizen journalism, a trend that has unceremoniously made every Tom, Dick and Harry a media practitioner without minding whether they are qualified or not.
The situation has become too entrenched that people no longer know the difference between real news and fake news simply because the people have formed the habit of swallowing hook, line and sinker anything they read without really knowing that all that glitters are not gold.
Subsequently, one truth Mr Nwangwu and his folks fail to understand is the fact that we are first of all Nigerians before any other political consideration. It does not matter whether we belong to A-party or B-party as the case may be. This is because no nation on earth will allow us into their country on the basis of being a member of one political party or another.
Hence, in his false narrative against the Minister, Mr Nwangwu ignorantly declared General Dambazau guilty of the arms scandal that rocked the military in the past administration by saying this: “The inadequacy of this event is demonstrated by the fact that Dambazau is equally guilty.” I waited patiently to read the source of his tale, but could not find any.
Mr Nwangwu without establishing the truth of his story went ahead to pass his myopic and jaundiced verdict on General Dambazau just because he wanted to appease his paymasters.
For the sake of our national interest, let me educate Mr Nwangwu a little even if his lust for his paymasters’ money will not allow him to put out a corrigendum concerning his article.
The fact that Ihejirika took over from General Dambazau does not mean the latter did what the former was accused of doing.
The writer should also note that Air Marshal Umar, who incidentally comes from same state as Dambazau who took over from Air Chief Marshal Oluseyi Petinrin was indicted but Petinrin was not indicted.
Accordingly, Petinrin and Lieutenant General AB. Dambazau served as Chiefs of Air Force and Army Staff at the same time with clean records.
The writer should also note that Alex Badeh took over from Petinrin, but Petinrin was not indicted.
Therefore, is it just because General Dambazau is serving under Buhari’s government that he must also be indicted for playing no part in the arms deal?
After all, General Dambazau, Petinrin and Ibrahim served as Chiefs of Army, Air Force and Navy, respectively at the same time, with Dike as the Chief of Defence Staff, so why going after Dambazau?
Further investigation has shown that during their time, when General Mukhtar was the National Security Adviser, there was no single arms deal as all procurements were done by the Ministry of Defence only.
Besides, when Boko Haram insurgency began, General Dambazau had already retired from the service. Therefore, there was no way he could have been involved in arms procurement for the northeast as Mr Nwangwu and his allies in the media suggests. When General Dambazau retired, it was General Aliyu Gusau that was the National Security Adviser.
Mr Nwangwu also tried to resurrect dead-horse-allegations against the Buhari administration but because the matter has died a natural death for lacking evidence to substantiate it, there is no point trying to educate him because Nigerians already know that such allegation does not exist.
Comrade Edwin Uhara writes from Abuja
