Armsgate: CACOL condemns EFCC boss statement defending ex-President Jonathan

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.