Ekiti State Governor, Mr Ayodele Fayose, has described the suspension
of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr.
Babachir Lawal, and the Director-General of National Intelligence
Agency (NIA), Ambassador Ayo Oke, as well as setting up of a three-man
Committee to investigate the discovery of over N13 billion cash by the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in a residential
apartment at Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, Lagos as diversionary,
afterthought and a prelude to the official cover-up of the original
owners of the money.
The governor, who said the Buhari-led government was becoming an
embarrassment to Nigerians with its macabre dance of shame, asked:
“Would the President have set up a probe panel if these scams were
linked to anyone in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) or those
members of his party that are not in his good books?
“Most importantly, what business does Presidential Committee have with
investigation of crime? Are they telling Nigerians that they have lost
confidence in all the intelligence and investigative agencies of the
government, including the EFCC and DSS?”
Speaking through his Special Assistant on Public Communications and
New Media, Lere Olayinka, Governor Fayose said it was becoming obvious
that President Buhari has lost control of his government, adding that;
“The Buhari-led Federal Government is operating like many governments
within one government. There appears to be many Presidencies within
the Presidency and this is the reason for the confusion everywhere.”
The governor declared that “the cat of President Buhari’s government
hypocrisy in its fight against corruption has already been let of the
bag” adding that; “Nigerians can no longer be deceived by a government
that protects its own people whenever they are accused of corruption
while setting the DSS and EFCC to invade houses of members of
opposition parties, especially those perceived as having presidential
ambition in 2019 in the night to arrest and detain them indefinitely
even when corruption allegations against them have not been proved.”
He said it was the inability of the President to take actions beyond
his political party and ethnic sentiments that plunged his government
into the present controversies, asking; “Did the President not write a
letter dated January 17, 2017, to the Senate, exonerating the SGF? So
what has changed in the case of the SGF? Was his announced suspension
just for balancing?
“Why waiting for this messy OsborneGate to act on the Presidential
Initiative for the North East (PINE) grass-cutting scam? Could it have
been a case of one Presidency (Buhari) writing the Senate on January
17, 2017 to clear the SGF and another Presidency suspending him today?
“Whichever way one looks at it, it gives no other impression than that
of confusion in the government.”
Speaking further, the governor asked; “Is their presidential committee
also going to tell Nigerians those who abandoned N49 million cash in
an airport that has CCTV cameras? What the owner of the N448 million
the EFCC said it found in a shop at LEGICO Shopping Plaza, Ahmadu
Bello Way, Victoria Island, Lagos?
“In all these, what I see is a government trying frantically to
cover-up corrupt acts of its functionaries but like I said before now,
even though we know that the APC-led federal government has the
capacity to sweep it under the carpet like many others before it,
Nigerians will have it on record that they are being ruled by a
government of the more you look, the less you see.”
