Mr Ali Mohammed Magashi, one of the recently appointed non-career ambassadors by President Muhammadu Buhari, has been discovered to be...
Mr Ali Mohammed Magashi, one of the recently appointed
non-career ambassadors by President Muhammadu Buhari, has been discovered to be
originally from Niger Republic and not Jigawa State as claimed, SaharaReporters
has gathered.
Magashi's immediate younger brother from same parents,
Ahamadou Harouna (aka Denis), is a lawmaker and member of the Convention
Democratique et Social, one of the parties backing the incumbent President of
Niger Republic, Issoufou Mahamadou.
His late father, Haru Tela, is said to have arrived Nigeria
as a refugee in 1972 as a result of drought and subsequent famine that swept
across the West Africa Sahel region at the time.
He settled at a village in Jigawa State on the outskirts of
Babura, a border town between Nigeria and Niger Republic where Governor
Abubakar was born.
It was there that the Jigawa governor met Magashi and formed
a friendship that would last till this day.
As a child in Nigeria, the ambassador nominee was known as
Ibrahim Haruna but got admission into Government Technical College, Wudil, Kano
State, as Ali Mohammed Magashi in 1977 -- he has kept that name till date.
Recall that President Buhari had on July 1, 2020 in a letter
sent to the Senate asked for the confirmation of the appointment of 41
non-career ambassadors designate including Magashi.
The Senate, however, confirmed 39 of them and stood down the
confirmation of nominees from Niger and Yobe states to resolve what the
committee described as a “mixup”.
Despite being from Niger Republic, Magashi sailed through
the screening exercise and is set to assume duties as an ambassador for
Nigeria.
To achieve this, he cleverly refused providing information
about his parents and the primary school he attended during the Senate
screening, SaharaReporters gathered.
Sources in Jigawa further disclosed that he was nominated by
Governor Abubakar to serve and protect his business interests within and
outside Nigeria.
It was reliably scooped that the reason behind this arrangement
was to have Magashi posted to Morocco where the Jigawa State governor has a
firm through which he imports fertilizers into Nigeria for sale to government
at exorbitant prices.
"In the event that he scales through, Governor Abubakar
intends to manipulate the Presidency for Magashi to be posted to Morocco.
"Casablanca is the latest business frontier for the
governor from where he imports fertilisers and sells to the Nigerian Government
among others," one of the sources said.
Calls put across to Magashi for reaction to the findings
were not responded to as of the time of this report.
Source
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