On Wednesday, Omoyele Sowore, publisher of Sahara Reporters, shared a video clip of Department of State Services (DSS) operatives detaining Usman Okai, a former House of Representatives member for the Dekina/Bassa Federal Constituency.
In the video, armed DSS officials entered an apartment. A few seconds later, they returned with a ruffled Okai and shoved him into a vehicle before zooming off.
Sowore accused Kogi State Governor Ahmed Usman Ododo of orchestrating Okai’s arrest.
Imagine how these lawless @OfficialDSSNG mercenaries are abducting, torturing, and dehumanizing a Nigerian citizen, @Austinokai just because he expresses himself against illegitimate Gov. Ododo of Kogi State. #RevolutionNow #FreeAustinOkaiNow pic.twitter.com/Bxr5ebkJht— Omoyele Sowore (@YeleSowore) February 26, 2025
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While the DSS personnel were in the compound, a female voice constantly shouted, “You people should take it easy.” The tattered state of Okai’s red shirt and the officers’ aggressive disposition suggest that Okai was manhandled before he was taken.
Okai’s recently criticised Habiba Onumoko, the Kogi State Accountant General. He had earlier said Onumoko had “unchecked and excessive powers”, and that her “cabal has taken over” Ododo’s administration.
On February 11, Okai claimed that Onumoko usurped the power of overseeing the Directors of Local Government, a duty that should be under the auspices of the Deputy Governor or the Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs.
Being a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the biggest opposition to Ododo, Okai’s criticism of the Kogi leader kickstarted at the dawn of the governor’s administration. In fact, he told Ododo to “expect criticism” immediately after his election was decided by the Supreme Court.
Ododo housed Yahaya Bello, his predecessor, from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) when he was wanted for an alleged N110 billion fraud. Once, when the EFCC tried to arrest Bello at the Governor’s lodge, they were resisted with gunshots heard during the encounter.
Before Bello’s whereabouts became known to the public, Okai accused Ododo of hiding Bello in the Government House.
During this period, Okai complained about Ododo escorting Bello for some time. He urged the governor to leave Abuja and return to Kogi, the state he abandoned for Abuja.
“It is no longer news that the governor and all his 21 local government chairmen, commissioners and some of his appointees have relocated from Kogi to Abuja where taxpayers’ money is being used to pay various hotel accommodations in the name of monitoring the ongoing tribunal case,” Okai said in June.
“The governor has a legal team and his party has leadership, but mandating all these people that their movement are being sponsored by taxpayers in pursuing a hopeless court case in Abuja is a waste of our resources and that shows the government has lost focus.”
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The former legislator also said that Kogi stagnated under Ododo despite the increased allocation from the Federal Government.
“Despite substantial revenue, citizens question the government’s spending,” Okai said in August.
“There’s no visible development in Kogi, unlike neighbouring states with similar allocations.”
In 2024, the Federal Government distributed trucks of rice to some states in the country to provide relief to the citizens. When 20 trucks of rice sent to Kogi went missing, Okai criticised Ododo’s silence about the rice disappearance.
The DSS has made a name for itself as an instrument to hound government critics. In September, DSS officers arrested Sowore at Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport upon his arrival from the United States. They linked his arrest to his involvement in the #EndBadGovernance protests.
FIJ received information that the DSS was planning to arrest founder and editor-in-chief ‘Fisayo Soyombo.
It was unclear if the DSS was after Soyombo for his work as an investigative/undercover reporter, as a social critic on microblogging platform X or as the founder of FIJ, an online newspaper that exposes injustice and holds the government to account.
The post Everything DSS Detainee Usman Okai Said About Kogi Gov Ododo appeared first on Foundation For Investigative Journalism.