Why is EFCC silent on budget padding scandal?

monjola sotubo

August 1, 2016 5:25 PM

If the EFCC and President Muhammadu Buhari expect Nigerians to believe in the validity of their anti-corruption war, then both Dogara and Jibrin must be interrogated with immediate effect.

Abdulmumin Jibrin.

The

Former Chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriation Committee, Abdulmumin Jibrin has made some astounding allegations about how the 2016 budget was padded, supposedly with the connivance of Speaker, Yakubu Dogara, but the EFCC hasn’t as much as uttered a peep on the issue.

This is strange because EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu has expressed a readiness to die while fighting corruption and also said that itmakes him cry.

“The impunity is too much. Sometimes I shed tears in the morning before I go to the office. It is just unbelievable; the rot is terrible. What I am saying is that people who know they have stolen our commonwealth should bring it back,” he said on January 20, 2016, while speaking about the corruption problem in the country.

“I am not afraid of anything. I prefer to die fighting corruption if need be,” Magu said on February 18, during a meeting with a group of lawyers in Lagos.

So why is Magu not crying about the budget padding scandal? Is the N284 billion that was allegedly smuggled into the budget not enough to give the anti-corruption boss a headache? Has he been so numbed by the billions of dollars stolen that this amount has become meagre in his sight?

The EFCC’s delay in addressing the scandal is casting an embarrassing shadow on Nigeria but most of all, it appears to buttress the point made the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that only its members are being arrested for corruption.

If the EFCC and President Muhammadu Buhari expect Nigerians to believe in the validity of their anti-corruption war, then both Dogara and Jibrin must be interrogated with immediate effect.

There must be no room for anyone to insinuate that he is above the law simply because is a member of the ruling party of the head of a legislative chamber.

ALSO READ: Dogara should be jailed - Jibrin

It is lawlessness such as this that got Nigeria into the mess it’s in now, and it is same that will keep it there if the right steps are not taken to ensure that justice is done whenever necessary, and no matter whose ox will be gored in the process.

monjola sotubo