By Debo Popoola
Freedom is like a dying ember covered with ashes; if fanned too much, it dies completely, and if it is not fanned at all, it goes off and the ashes blown away with the wind. Freedom is never appreciated until in bondage.
If there is anyone whose desire to be free from the shackles impeding him at this time, it will probably be the former National Security Adviser to the administration of former president Goodluck Jonathan, Col Sambo Dasuki. As you read, Sambo Dasuki mingles among men of the underworld at Kuje prison, and he will surely celebrate his Christmas with them.
Prisons are like branches of Hade on earth, they are places of punishment and anguish, places where limitation governs the air. It is only a free man that has the power of choice to decide what to eat and which cloth to adorn the body with; but in prison, there is no choice, the power of decision is relinquished.
The best of imprisonment can never be compared to the worst of freedom.
It is very catastrophic for someone who had threaded the path of freedom and meandered the ways of liberty to suddenly fall from the Olympian height into one of the chambers of Hades. Sambo Dasuki may still be hoping that someday, he would wake up from this nightmare he found himself.
Although Dasuki may have been granted bail on the two charges he is been prosecuted for, but he has so far, found it difficult to meet any of the conditions attached to the bail.
Dasuki is being prosecuted for two sets of charges before Justice Baba Yusuf and Justice Peter Afren, both of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Abuja.
On Friday, December 18, Justice Yusuf granted bail to Dasuki and his co-accused persons in the sum of N250 million with one surety. Dasuki is being tried before Justice Yusuf on a 19 count charge of misappropriation of about N32 billion meant for purchase of arms.
Other co-accused persons, who are also under the bail conditions imposed by Justice Yusuf, are a former Director of Finance and Administration in the Office of the NSA, Shuaibu Salisu; a former Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Aminu Baba-Kusa; and his two companies, Acacia Holdings Limited and Reliance Referral Hospital Limited.
Meanwhile, Justice Peter Affen on Monday, December 21, granted another bail to Dasuki and his co-defendants with respect to 22 counts of misappropriation of about N13 billion.
In this case, Dasuki was granted bail in the sum of N250m with two sureties in like sum. In both rulings, the judges ordered the accused to be remanded in Kuje prisons pending when ruling on their bail applications would be delivered.
However, as at Wednesday, which is the last working day, Dasuki and other accused persons were yet to fulfill the bail conditions.
Due to the stringent bail conditions, the accused persons are having a hard time making bail.
A source privy to the developments was quoted to have said: “The condition, which they (the accused persons) are finding difficult to meet, is getting a civil servant in the director cadre, who has N250m worth of property. In fact, the EFCC people are waiting for a civil servant who will come out to say that he has N250m.”
“The only problem we have is the fear by these potential sureties that they could be arrested by EFCC operatives, like it happened in the case of a former Governor of Adamawa State, Boni Haruna, whose surety suddenly withdrew after being intimidated by the EFCC.”
