The group, Coalition
Against Corrupt Leaders, (CACOL) through its Chairman, Comrade Debo Adeniran
has berated the acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC), Mr. Ibrahim Magu, statement of defence in favour of former President
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan on his involvement on the N2.1bn arms scandal asking if
the EFCC Chairman is combining the job of a solicitor with his chairmanship?
The Acting Chairman
of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), according to a
publication on Thisday Newspaper was
reported to have explained why former President Goodluck Jonathan has not been
arrested in connection with the $2.1 billion misappropriated by the Office of
the National Security Adviser (ONSA) when he was the president. According to
him, “the former president had not been summoned by the commission because no document
had been traced to him giving approval for the disbursement of the money for
any purpose other than for the purchase of arms.”
Expressing
his opinion, Adeniran said, ‘The EFCC chairman should be impartial when investigating
cases that involve the former president because the formal president is the Chief
Security Officer of the country and should be completely in the know of what
money was released for the security purposes, not the least, for the purchase
of arms and ammunition to prosecute a ravaging internecine. And if it was not
properly utilized, he should be the first person, as the Chief Accounting
Officer of his regime to query the formal National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo
Dansuki. Even the exposé ought to have come from the former president. Since Goodluck
Jonathan, didn’t see result of the assignment he gave the NSA and didn’t query
him, it makes him an accomplice in the act of spending the money wrongly.
Speaking
further, the anti-corruption crusader stressed that “the EFCC chairman job
doesn’t extend to being an advocate for any economic or financial crime. His
job is to investigate any suspect in order to ascertain their level of
involvement by using his prosecutorial power to get suspects prosecuted in a
court of competent jurisdiction and not to defend them before investigation is
concluded. In this case he is behaving as if the former president has hired him
as a defence counsel and that is not expected of somebody who is supposed to be
an unbiased umpire.”
The
former president being the Chief Accounting Officer of the former regime ought
to scrutinize everything he spent during his regime knowing that all approvals would
be traced to him. So also every vice or wrongs committed by any of his officers,
be it ministers, advisers or assistants, will be visited on him. Goodluck Jonathan
definitely has a question to answer. Its either he approves the spending,
sharing or distribution of the armsmoney
directly or he tolerated it. And whichever he did, he is complicit and should
be made answerable for his own misrule.
The
EFCC Chairman, before clearing the former president of complicity in the Dasukigate, should come up with his
result of investigation that confirms that indeed the NSA didn’t take authority
from the former president before he started dispensing the money, Adeniran
concluded.
Macjob Temitope
Media
Officer, CACOL
08029215000
January
12, 2016.
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