The long medical vacation
in the United Kingdom by President Muhammadu Buhari may have pushed to
the back seat the controversy generated by the graft allegations against
the suspended Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir
Lawal and the Director-General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo
Oke, but with the return of the ‘Lion King’ last weekend, the storm
appears gathering again.
The storm, which has so far swept Lawal
and Oke off their powerful seats in government may bring down more
principal officials of the Buhari administration going by alleged
revelations in Lawal’s statements of defence before a presidential probe
panel set up by President Buhari and headed by Vice President Yemi
Osinbajo.
The committee which had the Attorney-General of the
Federation, Abubakar Malami (SAN); and the National Security Adviser,
Babagana Monguno, as members was initially billed to submit its report
to Buhari on May 8 but could not do so because the President left the
country on May 7 for medical follow-up in London.
Speaking to
State House correspondents after submitting the report on Wednesday,
Osinbajo said he would not divulge the details of the report.
He said the ball was now in the President’s court to study the report and take decisions based on the recommendations.
When
asked whether he would disclose a brief of what is contained in the
report, Osinbajo said, “Of course not. This is a report, which contains
recommendations to the President. It is a fact-finding committee as you
know and what our terms of reference were was to find out based on the
fact available to us and based on the interviews of witnesses of what
transpired in those cases, one involving the SGF and the other the DG of
NIA.”
A highly placed security source with insight into the
details of the report however told Saturday Sun that “the
recommendations by the Osinbajo panel may not be as damning as the
statement of the suspended SGF himself because he had to open up that
other principal officials of the administration (Names withheld) also
benefitted from the IDP rehabilitation contracts.”
Saturday
Sun gathered that “it is not unlikely that the President will refer the
Committee report to one of the anti-graft agencies whose head has been
called to return home immediately from a trip to Vienna, he should
arrive this weekend. It then means that more senior officials within and
outside the presidency who benefitted directly or through proxy, may
eventually lose their jobs for conflict of interest and may eventually
face prosecution if the evidence against them is strong enough.”
The
decision of President Buhari to keep his line of action close to his
chest has also been generating panic and tension among the concerned
officials.
“Some of them believe they are too close to the
President to be sacrificed but they are apprehensive because the
President is not talking to them about it and as such they can’t read
his mind or predict his next line of action.
Though they are
putting indirect pressure on the President, creating an impression that
the probe was designed to persecute his inner caucus but I doubt if the
President will give them any soft landing”, the source told Saturday Sun
in Abuja on Friday.
The President had on April 19 suspended Lawal and Oke and constituted a three-man committee led by Osinbajo to investigate them.
The
panel investigated allegations of violations of law and due process
made against Lawal in the award of contracts under the Presidential
Initiative on the North East while it probed Oke on the discovery of
large amounts of foreign and local currencies by the Economic and
Financial Crimes Commission in a residential apartment at Osborne
Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos, for which NIA is laying claim. A company founded
by Lawal was said to have benefitted in the contracts bazaar.
The
Senate had first made accusations of corruption against Lawal in
December last year, after its committee on the humanitarian crisis in
the Northeast indicted him and then asked that he should be suspended
and prosecuted. But in January, the president rejected the Senate’s
indictment, saying he was not given fair hearing; before suspending him,
alongside Oke, four months later.
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