The belligerent exchange between the presidency and the Senate last week sadly smells like rotten eggs, notwithstanding the sheer poetic and entertaining humour by angry Senator Shehu Sani. The senator faulted a letter sent to the Senate by President Muhammadu Buhari informing the upper house that he declined to sanction Babachir Lawal, Secretary to the Government of the Federation, SGF, over some embarrassing contract scam, because the report upon which the Senate based its recommendation was a minority interim report, — a report which, according to him, was signed by three out of nine members of the committee. He also said that another factor that constrained him was the fact that Lawal was never given a fair hearing by the committee.
Sani was enraged by the president’s claim as he insisted that the invitation to the SGF was acknowledged vide a letter signed by a secretary in his office. The senator was also appalled that the President’s letter was written in ignorance of the truth that the report was signed by six members of the committee and, therefore, could not have been a minority report. With a sense of humour at once robust, Sani said, “Corruption in the Judiciary and others is treated with insecticide while corruption in the Presidency is treated with deodorant.” His is a trenchant summation of reactions to the practiced defence of members of the Executive accused of corruption. The opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, last week, recalled the cases of Rotimi Amaechi, Babatunde Fashola and Abdukadir Dambazzau, ministers of Transportation of Power, Works and Housing and of Interior respectively.
Critics believe that the allegations leveled against the ministers were swiftly explained away by the government, the way they did that of General Tukur…
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