 Welcome back, and it's time for our very first hot topic on the breakfast this morning. We have been joined by Augustine Ega, security experts, and who would also be joined by a legal practitioner, Mr. Johnston Argo, to take a look at the arrest of Mr. Godwin Amirphale, the CBN governor. Good morning to you, Mr. Ega. Good to be here again this morning. Good. Well, this arrest, no doubt, many Nigerians are excited that Amirphale has been suspended because many Nigerians are not happy with him for many reasons, especially the narrow redesign thing that affected many people from what we heard. Some people died in the process because they couldn't access their money to go to the hospital and a whole lot of things that happened with all of that. We have other issues that we know that may also be questioned as he is being interrogated. The Fadama scheme, the sale of Polaris Bank, alleged financing of iPop, the Forex fraud, narrow redesign policy, and others. However, before we go deeper, let's find out how constitutional or otherwise, his suspension and the rest is, because we know that, as it stands, there is an extant court order restraining the DSS, the EFCC, and others from arresting him, and that's given by an Abuja High Court last year. So let's start with that. Thank you. The issue of arrest by DSS, DSS, the profile of internal threats in the country. And so they are done with every happening, especially where there are allegations concerning any office. Long before now, he has been under the executive cover from the former government. Actually, they have been trailing him, and they have been looking for opportunity to get him because there have been a lot of allegations. Of course, those issues you have touched, they are very strong allegations. Terrorism funding, which is iPod and all of those things. DSS have the information, and I think it's not even a kind, it's an interrogation. An interrogation is when you have closed out on so many facts, and then it's pointing to one man as a hemsman. And so this one is an interrogation. And of course, we should also remember that the law enforcement, they have legal practitioners there with them. They have the legal unit. So before they go for this kind of arrest, they also know that they have to follow court proceedings. They have done that, and they also obtain executive order to do it. So they are not acting without authority. They are acting with due diligence. Yeah, but last year, like Maureen pointed out, there was an order restraining them from arresting MFLE. Does it mean because the previous government has left, the order also can be vacated just like that? Is that what the security people do? We can't say that. Like last year, before the order was lifted, someone there was a word from somewhere, remember the DSS, they worked directly with the presidency. And so we have a new government in place. And it has its own agenda. One of the things I saw was that they want to do a reform in the financial sector. And of course, there can be no reform without at least backtracking on what has happened in the system, in that particular sector, before you can reform. And so before he is the headman, they can't let him go like that. He has some things. He has occupied that office for more than five years. And so he has a lot to tell them based on the reforms they want to make. It's not just about, we should not look at the bad side of it. And he has done this. He has done that. His statements and whatever he have will also help the government to formulate new policies. And I think we should not look at it from the negative point only. There could also be a positive side. But the fact is that if the security have taken him, it doesn't mean it is for evil only. It could be for good. It's not about looking at this from a negative side. We are in a democracy. And as I stated before this, many Nigerians are happy that emphily has been suspended. But we're talking about deepening our democracy and respecting the rule of law. And so we're asking, is this within the law to have him arrested because of this restraining order that was given last year by a court? Has the DSS gotten a superior court order? Let us look at it from the point that when issues regarding criminality is being raised, I think the court is there to protect the rule of law. And when issues of criminality is being raised and alleged and then traced to a particular man, I think in that case the court also have the reason to allow, certainly, he is not being detained. They are not going to pass the final judgment on detention, but I know that he is detained to be interrogated. He is still a suspect. He will be interrogated. It's an interrogation. We should look at it. It's an interrogation. He is invited for interrogation. That is what they are doing right now. It's based on what he will say that will lead to another. So let us just leave it at this interrogation and the court cannot stop an interrogation. Okay, let's look at it, because the office of the CBN of any country is a very powerful and sensitive one. And because the CBN Act does not even empower the president to unilaterally sack such an official, do you see the need to have the CBN Act reviewed in order to enable the executive to be able to discipline such an officer when necessary? Let us also look at that the CBN office also have a tenure, I think they have a tenure and his tenure has expired. No, he hasn't. I think he has up to June next year, June 2024, for his tenure to be over. Well, let's look at that both from the acts. Let us also look at, no matter the office you occupy, and what it has to do with a lot of issues that the facts were evident to us. Okay, you hold your thoughts there, Aguah. Let me acknowledge the presence of our second guest, Mr. Johnson Agu, legal practitioner, has also joined us on this conversation. Good morning to you, Mr. Agu. Good morning. It's my pleasure to be here. All right, so Mr. Aguah, continue with your explanation. Yes, what we're saying is that if there's been so much allegation of corruption, it's not really corruption, criminality. I think we should look at it, the financial sector is a very critical sector in the economy. We see what happened earlier this year, that it was terrible, that people were using money to buy money, and something I've never heard, I've never heard, I've never experienced. People died in the process, and no one has the right to kill another for his own policy. So we see that those policies were not favorable, and they need to really know, the DSS need to really understand, of course, when they say DSS, of course they say there's a backbone that want to really know why those policies, why were they formulated, and why was it poorly implemented so that people have to die. Remember, we should, the government have right to account for every human life, and since those policies are coming from civilian analysis sitting, there is right, when you are under investigation, when you are under an investigation, you will always be suspended. I want you to also understand that when a person is under, you are holding any position of trust, and you are under investigation, you will be suspended at that moment to answer the questions. All right, thank you so much. Okay, let's call the legal practitioner, Justin Argo. I'm here. Help us through more light to this. How constitutional is this? I think I do not agree with you, your speaker, your guest. It is not correct that every time that there is an investigation, the investigator, or the person's subject of investigation, will have to be suspended from office. That is not correct. In fact, if it is correct that DSS is the entity doing the investigation, the key strength of DSS is secrecy. The person being investigated does not have to know that he is under investigation so that you can see completely what he is doing without him being aware. You let him carry on his normal day-to-day activities, you follow the trail of what he is doing, and you have complete evidence. In fact, you do not call in somebody or arrest somebody if you are doing such high-profile investigation before you conclude it. You arrest people when you have near-conclusive proof of what they have done wrong, so you are asking them to clarify one thing or the other, and if what they have clarified to you does not satisfy you, you not charge them with the offense that you have always suspected they were doing in the court. So at the point of arrest of an individual, you yourself who is arresting the arrest act, the arresting institution, is nearly certain that an offense has been committed. You do not have to wait to hear from the accused to know the offense the accused has committed. So this is where I differ from him. Otherwise, the prosecutorial or investigating authorities in Nigeria have right to invite any individual who does not have what we call constitutional immunity from prosecution. When I say constitutional immunity from prosecution, I am referring to those individuals or officials whom our constitution has conferred with immunity in Section 306 of the constitution or whom to order laws, they are expected to be protected in the things they do in their official capacity. And such laws that we have, some of them say you should not arrest them while they are still in office. I do not believe that the CBN governor is one of such, but he has a protected tenure. The CBN governor cannot just, we cannot just wake up and change our CBN governor at will. Even if we suspect that he is doing something wrong, there is a procedure to remove him. The constitution says we should address the synod with his offense and the synod that we now agree to the president's proposal to remove him. I am not saying competition, that should be CBN act. So the reason why the CBN act protected the office of the CBN governor is to give stability to that office, to remove it from the absolute control of the wings of the politicians. So that what we Nigerians experience or suspect to have experience under the regime of President Buare and God doing MIA filet will not occur. The reason, let me put it slightly differently, we are suspecting or we are seeing that God doing MIA filet allowed this Buare administration to borrow money that Nigeria did not have what they call ways and means over the statutory, more than the statutory threshold. They should not have borrowed more than 5% of a certain amount, but they borrowed far, far hundreds of percent of that amount. We are going 77 trillion because CBN was printing money and that is constitutionally unlawful. That is legally unlawful. If the CBN governor is truly independent and autonomous, he should have been able to say to the president of Nigeria, no, I cannot do such illegality. There is no law backing, in fact, law says that she didn't do it. So it is because of the consequences of saying no that we have said, okay, what is the highest consequence that should happen to him, remove her from office and hounding him with security apparatus like the DSS. So the law has now said he cannot be removed at will. And the law has now said in the constitution that nobody should be arrested or his liberty is detained or removed or whatever without due process of the law. I do not accept that hounding EMEI freely with DSS is within the due process of the law. That is a procedure. And like you rightly mentioned, the DSS recognized that they need the cut intervention to abridge the fundamental rights of Mr. EMEI freely to movement at some time in the past and they sought the cost order and the cut act and no, if you believe that he has committed an offense, investigate the offense and invite him ash, somebody who has committed an offense. We haven't been told that EMEI freely was invited. What we have just seen is fulfillment of the promise of this current president that EMEI freely we dealt with when he enters office. So he has simply given directives, also we believe to DSS to pick EMEI freely up immediately after suspension. So telling us that EMEI freely was running from here because he picked up somewhere else are all in my view something to package the necessity to get him in a gestapo style. Mr. EMEI. And above the provisions of the law. Yes. Mr. EMEI. Can you continue? Could you just adjust your framing just a bit because we're not seeing good. That's perfect. Can you see it clearly now? Yes. That's perfect. Now some may argue that perhaps the reason why the DSS moved the way they did is that he has not honored invitations last year. We have not been told he was invited. Are you sure? I haven't seen that because we were told that he was suspended belly on Friday. So between Friday and today there has been no working day. Now he was, it is in the news that he was invited last year by the Senate to represent, I mean investigating something that had to do with judgment and debt. The DSS is a legislative arm of the government. DSS is within the executive. So Mr. Agu, in a nutshell, DSS is breaking the law by arresting him. If the DSS cannot invite him, I wonder, if he's a public officer or even if he's a suspended public officer, he still has a name to protect, all we should expect is, oh, Mr. Mefile, come to our office on social and social dates, and we should expect that when he comes, DSS will account for his arrival and not a station where hours and hours after he has been taken into custody will be debating where, who knows his whereabouts, DSS or somebody who has requested laws that DSS does not have custody of him and let them not confirm they have custody of him. So if anything happened within the interval to Mr. Mefile, they will be denied the knowledge of his whereabouts. That's not proper. So are you of the opinion, Mr. Johnson, Agu, that the President Tanubu should have waited for the 10th assembly to have been inaugurated so that he could go about this the proper way? He doesn't even need to wait. The United Assembly that was in power at the time he was sworn in was sufficient to act on the legislative side of the removal process. So he doesn't need to wait. If he was so desperate to get rid of Mr. Mefile on the day of his swearing-in, then he should pass his request to the National Assembly and either sit and approve it. So be it. Okay, currently he just signed a law passed by the National Assembly, I mean the United National Assembly, regulating the electricity sector and devolving some more powers to certain entities. Didn't he read that? He passed the constitutional or another law changing the retirement age of judges from 65 to 77 to maybe even from across board. So why didn't he wait till the United Assembly passes and the 10th assembly come and pass those laws before he signs them? It is the same constitutional responsibility whether you call it the 9th assembly or the 10th assembly. It is the same constitutional responsibility whether you call it the 15th president or the 16th president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. The president of Nigeria is the president of the National Assembly, is the National Assembly. Each entity has to do its job. Which means the president has started off by breaking the law too? Clearly. There are a lot of things about it. And this is giving us a fourth test of what we expect. Should we expect legalism, rule of law? The way he handled the federal system, has also shown us that we are not expecting a president that is compliant with him, rule of law. He passed a showmanship. All right, Ega, please come in here. How do you respond to the explanation given by the legal practitioner who has made it clear that President Tanubu has gone against the rule of law in the way that Amir Fahli has been arrested and suspended too? Well, he is a legal practitioner in his own area, but we in the security aspect, we see our things different. He is talking from his own perspective, but in our own area, when we see that certain allegations of criminality, remember DSS, the Internet, it is like funding of iPod is a very serious issue that they really need to know. They have to find out more. And he is saying that he was arrested. What if DSS have consistently invited Amir Fahli to come? There is a way some of these public officers, based on the immunity they have over their offices. When they are there, sometimes they don't show regard to law enforcement. We know so much about that. And sometimes some of them end up with this kind of brute force, which you see DSS doing this show. They may have, they may have, because these things, like he is saying that they should have discreetly investigated Amir Fahli. But I tell you, before the DSS will call you, I say when they were narrowed down, whatever they are doing to interrogation, that means they have a lot of facts that it has to answer to it. It's not only DSS. They have all the intelligence community in Nigeria working hand in hand. They share intelligence. And so when they narrow down and come after you, they have a lot to say. So let us not see that it's just a public thing. They may have been invited in the quiet to come for some certain questioning. And of course, this is where they make big money. They become big. They don't respect the law, especially when they are talking to Mr. President. But now probably they have another president, not Mr. Buhari. So let us look at it from that. That's where I have my own basis. Security will look at things different from the national security and national threats. Things that can lead to complete breakdown of law and other in Nigeria, even the war situation. That is how security see their things. From the legal aspect, they look at the protect human right. We know that. And so these are two things that we see. But I want to tell you that in the security perspective, we always consider legality. Legality is a very, very critical thing before you. The technical glitch going on there. We hope it does not continue so that we can have this conversation get to a very logical conclusion. Mr. Ega, can you hear us now? Okay. Mr. Johnson. Yeah. I'm here. All right. So obviously there is a need for security agencies to understand the fact that in as much as we need to do their job, that there is a need to protect the democracy that we are cherishing right now. Do you see that there appears to be some sort of disconnect between the security agencies and the way things should be done legally? Clearly. Clearly. Sometimes our security officials have not understood that rule of law is an aspect of security. Because if you begin to do things just because you've got the powers to do them, other people will also take on themselves to defend themselves because they have powers to defend themselves. So it will not boil down to who have superior powers and let us be honest. What we are calling power or throne or as a robber or whatever, only gives us an illusion of power. We really need the support of every human being in the country to actually have powers. Let me cut in there. Mr. Ega, let me just cut in there, sorry. What is the place of law as in the rule of law, the legal aspect of things when it comes to national security? They both work hand in gloves. You cannot have national security with that rule of law. In fact, with that rule of law, you are inviting anarchy. Let me put it this way, let me start this from the basis. The concept of national security is that all of us, you, the anchor, persons, me and the security aspect that you have invited and every member of the society are imbued with the right to protect ourselves and pursue our own welfare. The way we want it. But we have notionally agreed to submit some aspects of our rights to a central organ, a central body we are calling government to regulate how we will pursue our individual happiness and safety. And the condition is that that central organ we are calling government, we are giving a sizey right we have given to it responsibly and fairly so that any day the central organ begins to abuse the collective privilege we have all donated to it, we are imbued with a right to resume our individual rights to protect ourselves and pursue our welfare. That is the basic jurisprudence. Okay, now that this has happened this way, does Mofile have any kind of, what legal bidress options does he have? Because there is also the right of the office of the citizen, so to speak. Security and welfare of the people. So any time it is sizes in such a way that the people are supposed to be secured and seeking their welfare begin to feel that the government is alienated. I think you didn't hear me, I'm asking, because I'm remembering what happened in the course of... If individual who can master any form of force might be tempted to start securing himself even against the so-called government. All right, Johnson, do you see a beg your pardon? That is why we are insisting that the government must do its own functions within the rule of law. Yeah, do you see Mofile fighting this legally? I do remember the time of Jonathan when Sanusu was suspended. He went to court. I do not have the entire facts, what I'm only speaking to is what is in the public demand. So if Mofile has been advised, it's possible that he would seek legal assistance. And there is room for the court to declare his rights. DSS has had their role. I think there has been a case that was decided between DSS and Nabakoba on this kind of issues. So DSS has their roles. I do... If truly Mofile was corrupt or all of those kind of stuff, those things can be done within the portfolio of the police. DSS is merely secret intelligence gathering. And if there is really, really national security threat, they have their way. They have their means. They don't have to look like lackeys or politicians. Well, thank you so much, Johnson, Argo, and Mr. Augustine Ega. Both of you have been so amazing in your analysis this morning over this matter. I just wanted to see how it unfolds. We also understand that the DSS may be seeking an order to extend a Mofile's time with them. I don't know whether to use detention now or time with them. That's the word they used. Detention with them for further questioning. Thank you, gentlemen, for your time this morning on the breakfast. My pleasure. Thank you. It's my... All right. So there you have it. You've had our very first hot topic. And from there, we'll move over to sports. We'll be joining you in a moment. Stay with us for that.