04022017

10—SATURDAY Vanguard, FEBRUARY 4, 2017
•Mike Adeniy
•Gogo Bright
•Joseph Edionwele
•Babatunde
Kolawole
•Samson
Okwu
By Emman Ovuakporie
and Johnbosco Agbakwuru
Given the high sensitivity the
All Progressives Congress,
APC-led administration
brought to bear in its war against
graft; it is not surprising that
Nigerians of all shadows would
scrutinise the actions and inactions of
the administration where issues of
corruption are alleged.
The champion of the war is
President Muhammadu Buhari, a
man who has so far endeared himself
to many across national and
international boundaries for living
above graft even when exposed to the
kind of lucre that have entrapped
fellow Nigerians.
President Buhari’s distaste for graft
is well summarised in the popular
saying that the easiest way to get him
to shut out anybody is to say that the
person is corrupt.
It is against this background that
Nigerians have now taken the
presidency to task over the president’s
dithering procrastination in dealing
with matters of alleged corruption
concerning closest members of his
administration.
While some allegations have been
allowed to pass, critical members of
the public have, however, continued to
question the presidency’s decision to
prevaricate on the report of the Senate
Ad-Hoc Committee on Humanitarian
Crisis in the Northeast which indicted the
administration’s top bureaucrat, Mr.
Babachir Lawal.
The Secretary to the Government of the
Federation, SGF was indicted by the
Senator Shehu Sani led panel in its report
presented to the Senate and adopted by
the legislative body last December.
The president in his response to the
indictment, however, chose the path of
procedure in faulting the Senate’s
adoption of a report which he claimed
was signed by only three of the eight
members.
However, investigations by Vanguard,
published last Thursday, showed that
contrary to the president’s assertion that
only three members signed the document,
the chairman of the committee and six
members signed the report. Critics were
quick to latch on to the presidency’s
attachment to procedure which they
claimed was a deviation from the
president’s well-known aversion to such
issues. The real issue of whether the man
was found wanting appeared not to
matter to the President.
Nigerians have also taken the president
Buhari’s anticorruption
war
at crossroads:
Reps speak
Is it that there is no
other person that is
qualified to do exactly
that job? He should
have been removed
to task for his decision to, on his own,
resubmit Mr. Ibrahim Magu as
chairman of the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC
despite the allegations raised against
him by the Department of State
Services, DSS which affirmed in a
report that he would be a distraction
to the president’s war against
corruption. Though the allegations
raised against Magu were alleged to
in some quarters to have been cooked,
the president’s seeming cavalier
dismissal of the allegations,
however, unsettled many.
It is against the background of
the seeming contradictions in the
fight against corruption that
members of the House of
Representatives expressed mixed
reactions to the issue.
We are not fighting
corruption — Rep Gogo
Bright (Okrika: Rivers)
This is the worst thing that has
happened to the fight against
corruption because if the entire Senate
sat on the issue after a committee of
the Senate turned in its report after
doing a thorough investigation which
indicated that the SGF who awarded
contract to his company; only for at
the end of the day somebody will sit in
the convenience of his office to clear
the person, it means then we are not
fighting corruption. On the issue of
Magu, the DSS indicted him; and it is
the same DSS on the basis of whose
report judges were harassed in this
country, and now you are saying the
DSS this time around did not do a good
work. So, my dear, there is problem
in the land.
President is encouraging
corruption
—Rep Joseph Eghoghon
Edionwele; Edo State
If the president whose major
slogan is anti -corruption would
react in this way, as Senator
Shehu Sani rightly said, that
is the end of the fight against
corruption. If not for anything the
indictment is enough to remove
the SGF and in good conscience,
even the SGF should have on his
own resigned. That his company
was mentioned is enough for him
to have resigned or enough for
the president to have removed
him. Is it that there is no other
person that is qualified to do
exactly that job? He should
have been removed. To insist that
he is cleared, cleared of what?
That his company is not the one
that was involved? Is it that he
is no longer the owner of the
company? The fact that his
company was given that contract
alone means he must have
influenced the job to himself.
For the president to say they have
cleared him is not encouraging.
What the president has done is to
encourage corruption.
SGF is morally guilty
—Mike Adeniyi Omogbehin,
Ondo State
It simply means that the anticorruption
war has been finally declared
over. I agree with Senator Sani intoto
when he says that corruption is fought
within the opposition and other arms of
government with insecticides and within
the presidency, it is fought with
deodorants. For the singular fact that the
Senate Committee was able to establish
beyond reasonable doubt that the
Secretary to the Federal Government has
interest in a particular company, that he
never resigned his directorship until after
that contract ultra vires of the
Memoranda of the Article of that
Company; he stands guilty in court of
moral justice, he stands guilty in court of
common sense and he should have
excused himself even before the hue and
cry got to this level. I am surprised that
President Buhari is taking this action.
Some of us in opposition never knew that
President Buhari was going to so soon
discard his anti-corruption war.
Only the courts can find him
guilty – Rep. Babatunde Gabriel
Kolawole; Ondo State
The issue of governance is a very
complex issue, and most of the time,
you don’t do governance with
sentiment. It is very important we look
at issues holistically and get to the
bottom of issues we are trying to push
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