A group, Coalition Against Corrupt Leaders, has condemned the Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu’s comment on ex-President Goodluck Jonathan’s involvement in the ongoing arms scandal case.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, the group said it was improper for Magu to defend Jonathan, wondering whether the EFCC boss was “combining the job of a solicitor with his chairmanship (of the commission).”
Magu was reported to have explained why the ex-President had not been arrested in connection with the $2.1bn misappropriated by the Office of the former National Security Adviser.
According to him, the former President had not been summoned by the commission because no document had been traced to him, showing that he gave approval for the disbursement of the money for any purpose other than for the purchase of arms.
But the Executive Chairman of CACOL, Debo 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 utilised, he should be the first person, as the Chief Accounting Officer of his regime, to query the former National Security Adviser, Col. Sambo Dasuki (retd.). Even the exposé ought to have come from the former President. Since Goodluck Jonathan didn’t see the result of the assignment he gave to the NSA and didn’t query him, it makes him an accomplice in the act of spending the money wrongly.”
Adeniran argued further that the EFCC chairman’s job did not extend to being an advocate for any economic or financial crime suspect.
“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.”
