By Mohammed Bello Doka
General Tukur Buratai, I write with a heavy heart but with the clarity that truth demands. I hold your service to this nation in the highest esteem. Your decades of sacrifice as a soldier and your leadership as Chief of Army Staff during some of our darkest hours against insurgency are not forgotten. You stood firm when our nation was under siege, and for that, every patriotic Nigerian owes you a debt of gratitude. However, the distinction must be made between honoring a man’s service and accepting his political arguments without scrutiny. On the matter of President Bola Tinubu’s drug case and the looming release of his files by a United States court, your recent position paper demands a response—not as an attack on your person, but as a defense of the truth that Nigeria desperately needs.
Your argument that this matter is a case of foreign interference is deeply flawed and, with respect, dangerously misleading. You have framed the United States court proceedings as an assault on Nigerian sovereignty and called on Nigerians to close ranks and resist. But this is not a case of a foreign power meddling in our domestic affairs. This is a case of a United States court adjudicating a Freedom of Information request regarding financial transactions that occurred on American soil involving funds held in American banks. The crimes alleged—drug trafficking and money laundering—were not committed in isolation within Nigeria. They involved the American banking system, American territory, and American judicial processes. The United States is not sitting in judgment over Nigeria; it is exercising its lawful domestic jurisdiction over financial crimes that flowed through its own system. To frame this as interference is to misunderstand or deliberately misrepresent the nature of transnational crime and the international legal frameworks that govern it.
Your call to resist this process also contradicts Nigeria’s own treaty obligations. Nigeria is a State Party to the 1988 United Nations Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs, which mandates mutual legal assistance among member states. Nigeria has a bilateral Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty with the United States, which we have invoked in the past to seek cooperation in freezing assets and extraditing fugitives. When Nigeria asks the United States for help in pursuing its own citizens who have committed crimes abroad, we call it international cooperation. But when the United States exercises its own judicial process regarding a Nigerian leader’s past financial flows, we suddenly call it foreign interference. This double standard is untenable and exposes a fundamental hypocrisy that diminishes our standing in the international community.
You have argued that these events occurred thirty-three years ago and should not define a man’s entire political career. But the electoral period is precisely the time when a candidate’s entire record must be subjected to maximum scrutiny. President Tinubu is not a first-time candidate; he is an incumbent seeking a second term in 2027. Voters are entitled to know everything about a person seeking to command the armed forces, control the national treasury, and represent two hundred and fifty million people on the global stage. There is no statute of limitations on the electorate’s right to know. If these files are truly clean, then there should be no fear of their release. The fact that you and the President’s legal team are fighting so aggressively to suppress them suggests that the contents are damaging and that the truth must be hidden at all costs.
Your argument that releasing these files will damage Nigeria’s economy and scare off foreign investment is another flawed premise. The damage has already been done. For the past two years, major international outlets have repeatedly published headlines linking Nigeria’s president to drug forfeiture. In diplomatic circles and global financial intelligence units, Nigeria is already flagged as a nation with a chief executive who has an unresolved narcotics asset case in the United States. This has already triggered enhanced due diligence on Nigerian officials and businesses operating internationally. International credit rating agencies and investors factor in institutional integrity, and the mere litigation surrounding these files has already inserted a political risk premium into Nigeria’s sovereign profile. You argue that release will scare off foreign direct investment, but the ongoing uncertainty and the President’s refusal to voluntarily clear his name through Nigerian judicial processes have already achieved that chilling effect.
The link between drug trafficking and terrorism is a matter of global consensus and official Nigerian policy. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency and the Office of the National Security Adviser have publicly established that illicit drug proceeds are a primary revenue stream for terrorist groups operating in the Lake Chad region and the North-East. By dismissing these allegations as an old personal indiscretion, you ignore that the nature of the offense is globally classified as a threat to national security. A former Chief of Army Staff who led counter-insurgency operations cannot claim ignorance of this reality. Drug cartels and terrorists are converging threats, and any leader with unresolved narcotics links is a security liability. To argue that Nigerians should look the other way on this matter is to undermine the very security doctrine you once defended.
Your own response to false allegations against you reveals the inconsistency in your position. When retired Major General Danjuma Ali-Keffi and Sahara Reporters linked you to terrorism financing, your response was swift, aggressive, and unequivocal. You dismissed the allegations as fabricated and mischievous. You demanded an immediate retraction and a public apology. You filed a one billion naira defamation suit. You stated that you had never been investigated, indicted, or convicted for any such offense. You called it illogical for the same person who led decisive actions against terrorism to be linked to terrorists. That was the response of an innocent man. If President Tinubu’s files are truly clean, why are you not demanding their release? Why are you not threatening legal action against anyone who spreads lies? Instead, you are begging Nigerians not to look, framing transparency as an attack on national sovereignty, and preparing the nation for economic collapse if the truth comes out. An innocent man demands the evidence be made public. A guilty man pleads with everyone to look away. Your current posture is the lamentation of someone who knows exactly what those files contain and is desperately trying to protect the man they implicate.
The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency has confirmed that it has no records of Tinubu’s nineteen ninety-three United States forfeiture. This is not a sign of sovereignty; it is a sign of willful institutional amnesia or deliberate cover-up. A Nigerian agency with a mandate to track drug-related assets and prosecute Nigerian citizens globally has no record of a four hundred and sixty thousand dollar forfeiture in a United States court involving a future president. Under Nigeria’s Money Laundering Prevention and Prohibition Act, Nigerian authorities are empowered to investigate financial crimes committed abroad by Nigerian citizens. By taking no action, the NDLEA has abdicated its statutory responsibility. A truly sovereign Nigeria would have opened its own investigation the moment the allegations resurfaced. It would have formally requested the FBI files through the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty channel, reviewed them through the NDLEA, the Code of Conduct Bureau, and the Attorney General’s office, and issued a definitive, transparent verdict to the Nigerian people before any United States court could act. Instead, Nigeria has done nothing. Your call to obstruct the United States process while Nigeria itself sits idle is not defending sovereignty; it is hiding behind a foreign flag of convenience.
The fact that Nigeria’s president is the subject of a drug trafficking investigation is in itself a disgrace to the nation. This is not a minor allegation. It involves heroin trafficking and the laundering of drug proceeds. It involves four hundred and sixty thousand dollars forfeited to the United States government. It involves a man who now holds the highest office in the land and commands the armed forces. This is not a matter of personal reputation; it is a matter of national integrity. How can Nigeria lead the fight against drug trafficking in West Africa when its own president is entangled in narcotics allegations? How can we demand that other nations take us seriously when we refuse to take our own accountability seriously?
Nigeria’s image is already tarnished. The only way to redeem its already battered reputation is not by engaging in a cover-up but by confronting the truth with courage and transparency. The world is watching, and every day that passes without a clear, honest, and transparent resolution to this matter deepens the suspicion that Nigeria has something to hide. The international community will not forget that a Nigerian president fought to suppress his own drug files while his supporters framed transparency as an attack on national sovereignty. That legacy will outlast Tinubu’s presidency and will haunt Nigeria for generations.
General Buratai, Tinubu is not Nigeria. Nigeria is two hundred and fifty million people. Nigeria is thirty-six states and over two hundred and fifty ethnic groups. Nigeria is our children, our future, and our collective destiny. Protecting Tinubu from scrutiny is not protecting Nigeria. It is protecting one man’s political career at the expense of the nation’s integrity. True patriotism demands that we hold our leaders accountable. True patriotism demands that we demand the truth, no matter how uncomfortable it is. True patriotism demands that we protect Nigeria’s institutions, its reputation, and its future over and above any individual.
I understand that you may believe you are acting in the nation’s best interest. But history will judge us not by our intentions but by our actions. History will judge whether we stood for truth or for power. History will judge whether we defended our institutions or sacrificed them for one man. History will judge whether Nigeria was a nation of patriots who demanded accountability or a nation of subjects who bowed to power.
Nigeria deserves better. It deserves a president whose records can withstand any scrutiny. It deserves a populace that demands truth over nationalism. It deserves a former military chief who remembers that his oath was to the Constitution and the Nigerian people, not to one man’s legacy. The path forward is not through lamentation and deflection. It is through transparency, accountability, and the courage to face the truth, no matter how painful.
I urge you, General Buratai, to reconsider your position. I urge you to join the call for transparency rather than the defense of secrecy. I urge you to remember that Nigeria’s dignity does not rest on Tinubu’s reputation. It rests on our collective commitment to justice, truth, and the rule of law. The truth will eventually come out. The only question is whether Nigeria will be seen as a nation that confronted its failures with courage or a nation that tried to bury them in shame. Do not let Nigeria be complicit in a cover-up. The nation you served so faithfully deserves better.
Mohammed Bello Doka can be reached via bellodoka82@gmail.com
