By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D. Twitter: @farooqkperogi It’s great that after much dillydallying President Buhari has finally summoned...
By Farooq A. Kperogi,
Ph.D.
Twitter: @farooqkperogi
It’s great that after much dillydallying President Buhari
has finally summoned the intestinal and testicular fortitude to “suspend”
“cash-and-carry” SGF Babachir David Lawal of “grass-cutting” infamy.
In my December 17, 2016 column titled “12 conditions for praising Buhari,” the third condition I gave for praising
the president was that he should, “Sincerely investigate and prosecute the
corrupt people in his administration. Secretary to the Government of the
Federation David Lawal Babachir has become a byword for unspeakably
high-profile corruption. He has been accused of all kinds of shady deals,
including callously shortchanging IDPs, prompting the equally sleazy Senate to
call for his prosecution.
 |
| Babachir David Lawal stuck out his tongue to mock Nigerians who think anything will come out of his suspension |
“Abba Kyari has been accused of all manner of corruption.
Irrefutable documentary proofs of Buratai’s corruption have been published on
Sahara Reporters. Amaechi has been accused of bribing judges. The list goes on.
Not a word has been heard from the presidency in response to any of these accusations.
But (corrupt) political opponents are hounded, even without firm evidence, in
the name of ‘anti-corruption’ fight.”
My consistent criticisms of the president’s selective
anti-corruption fight in my columns may have nothing to do with his latest move
(for all you know, the president probably never even reads my column), but I’ll
fulfill my pledge nonetheless and say, “good job, Mr. President for suspending
one of the biggest embarrassments to your government—and to Nigeria.”
But this is only a start, a small start. Abba Kyari, Tukur
Buratai, Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, Rotimi Amaechi and other corrupt fat cats
in the government should be shown the door, too. Then, we can begin to talk of
real anti-corruption fight.
Frankly, Lawal should never have been Secretary to the
Government of the Federation. The man neither has the experience nor the temperament
to hold such a sensitive office. He is a notorious gaffe machine who can’t seem
to be able to say the right thing.
He once said Boko Haram was a PDP creation to intentionally
depopulate the northeast region because the region’s political sympathies lie
with the APC. Boko Haram was formed, he said, to "decimate the voters’
population on the North-east," he told journalists, because, he added, "they [PDP members] know that the
region is 100 percent APC." Which
sane adult talks like that?
At a church thanksgiving service in his honor on October 17,
2015, Lawal also said Bola Tinubu and Bisi Akande were singularly responsible
for his appointment as SGF. “Because if it has been left to northerners, it is
doubtful if they will take a Christian man to make Secretary to the Government
of the Federation,” he said. That was needlessly divisive.
During the same thanksgiving service, Lawal publicly
admitted to receiving monetary gifts from Ebonyi State Governor David Umahi—in
contravention of the Code of Conduct for Public Officers. “This is a man I
don’t know but he is PDP,” Lawal said at the event. “He’s Igbo but he sent a trailer load of rice to my
governor for the IDPs in Adamawa state recently. May be he did not want me to
say it. Again, one day I was just in my office looking and sounding broke. He
just said, ‘during the Sallah, I am going to send Ebonyi rice to you.’ And I
said, ‘I don’t want Ebonyi rice. I have too much rice in my house. I don’t even
know what to do with the rice.’ So later his ADC comes and says, ‘Oga sent me
to you.’ And I said, ‘what is inside that thing,’ and he said, ‘money,’ and I
said, ‘bring it my friend.’”
This was before he discovered that he could cut grass for
internally displaced Boko Haram victims for hundreds of millions of naira. Some
interesting transformation there.
These are just a few of the man’s many embarrassingly
tactless public utterances. Plus, people who have related with him say he is astonishingly
arrogant, corrupt and incompetent. It’s such a joke that a person that reckless,
unguarded, and impolitic is saddled with a job as sensitive as the Secretary to
the Government of the Federation.
In fact, Lawal himself thought it was a joke that anyone would find him worthy to be SGF. “I
started getting hints to this job just about two to three days to it, and I
thought it was a very big joke,” he said at the thanksgiving service organized
to celebrate his appointment. Yes, it’s still a big joke, Lawal!
However, while I think the president has moved in the right
direction, several throbbing concerns remain. Why did the president initially
write to the National Assembly to exonerate the SGF without prior investigation? What new information
informed the decision to suspend and investigate him now? Why is he being
investigated by his colleagues, one of whom actually exonerated him of the same
allegations in the past? Can we expect any justice from this committee? Why isn’t
he being investigated by an independent presidential commission of inquiry or,
at the very least, the EFCC or the ICPC?
Corrupt political opponents of the president are never
investigated by a presidential committee. They are often hounded by the EFCC
and tried in the news media. Why is the president’s corrupt political associate
being treated differently?
And should we expect Abba Kyari (who is accused of accepting a hefty bribe from MTN to reduce the telecom company’s fine), Tukur Buratai
(about whom incontrovertible evidence of inexplicable enrichment has been
provided) and others to be suspended and investigated, too? That would be the
real anti-corruption fight. If not, even if Lawal is found guilty and fired,
people will impute ulterior motives to his ouster. For the anti-corruption
campaign to succeed, it must be sincere, wholehearted, and just.
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