THE Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF) has
threatened a showdown with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission
(EFCC) over its accusation that the NGF Chairman and Governor of Zamfara
State, Abdulaziz Yari, diverted part of London-Paris Club refunds.
The
governor has been under EFCC investigation for some time now as he has
been severally accused of using the proceeds of the alleged crime to buy
himself choice properties in United States and Nigeria.
The governor has denied the allegations and is currently in court against the agency to prove his innocence.
However,
the forum of governors said on Thursday that since the EFCC has refused
to back down in “the needless harassment and embarrassment” of its
chairman and some other members of its forum across the 36 states of the
federation, it has no other option but to fight back with all it has.
As
a first step, the governors said they will formally write to the
Federal Government to complain about the antics of the commission and
its chairman, Ibrahim Magu, against them.
At a press conference
with select group of journalists in Abuja, Governor Yari said the EFCC
since its inception in 2004 has be intimidating and harassing state
governors.
“We are going to write to the Federal Government that
enough is enough; that either the EFCC do their work or we should
engage in a showdown with them because nobody became governor to be intimidated, to be harassed, to be abused by a deputy commissioner of police,” he said.
He
said the EFCC has since abandoned the fight against corruption in
pursuit of personal vendetta orchestrated by some politicians who are
not comfortable with the progress being made under the current
administration.
The NGF chairman said since it is not possible
for any governor to walk into any bank and take money out of the vault
without assistance from bank officials, the EFCC should have proved its
sincerity to the fight against corruption by arresting and bringing to
public knowledge any bank official who is found to have helped any
particular governor siphon money.
The EFCC was lampooned for
always rushing to make a show of any highly placed individual who has a
frivolous petition written against him, without the anti-graft agency
doing a proper investigation.
The anomaly, he said, accounts for
the retinue of losses the EFCC has been recording in courts in the
process of prosecuting people suspected of corruption.
According
to the governor, the basis of accusation against governors, especially
as it has to do with project pricing has always been wrong.
“I
believe the EFCC does not have its own engineers to quantify, to know
what is exactly on the ground. And a project that is done in Rivers
State for N2 million, in Zamfara it will be about N150, 000.
“You
cannot say the price of things in Rivers should be the same in Zamfara
or somewhere else. The terrain is entirely different and the cost is
different, so the risk as well is entirely different, so all these are
taken into consideration.
“If there is a project which is being
suspected to be over-inflated, there are quantity surveyors. You can’t
just because somebody wrote a petition then you say you are working on
it without doing your own due diligence,” he noted.
“The problem
with the EFCC is they only want to know they invited governor, one
former governor is arrested and they will not tidy their work before
going to court; they go to court and lose all the cases because of the
way they initiated the case, they never initiated to achieve success,
rather they want to make publicity stunts.
“You can’t fight corruption that way and forever they will not achieve anything”, he said.
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