A group, Coalition Against Corrupt
Leaders, has described as a national embarrassment the lawmakers who
followed wife of Senate President Bukola Saraki, Toyin, to the Economic
and Financial Crime Commission’s office last week.
The wife of the Senate President was accompanied to the EFCC’s office in Abuja by 25 lawmakers.
According to the Executive Chairman of
the CACOL, Debo Adeniran, that the lawmakers should abandon their
constitutional duties to follow Mrs Saraki, who was being investigated
for corruption charges by the anti-corruption agency, is the height of
irresponsibility.
He said, “These national lawmakers and
supposed representatives of the Nigerian people reportedly accompanied
Mrs. Saraki, who had been invited by the anti-corruption agency to come
and answer to an allegation of corrupt practice, in a show of solidarity
with the accused. We are particularly disturbed and miffed at what has
been termed not only a show of shame and gross irresponsibility but a
clear anti-thesis of what their primary constitutional duty is.
“One
cannot but wonder how far President (Muhammadu) Buhari would be able to
go in his avowed war against corruption in this country, if the very
lawmakers who are expected to give him the needed support through the
provision of enabling legal framework with which to successfully
prosecute the war, are openly, though tacitly, fraternising with
corruption by turning themselves into bodyguards of a suspected
corruption criminal.”
The CACOL boss accused the legislators
of doing a job they were not elected to do. He added that the lawmakers’
action presupposed that they wanted to intimidate the EFCC in its task
of tackling corruption.
“It’s sad that they chose to abandon
their statutory role of lawmaking while playing the meddlesome
interloper, thereby diminishing the exalted chambers they represent,”
the CACOL boss said.
He likened the incident to what was
witnessed during ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration, when a
Peoples Democratic Party chieftain, Bode George, was accompanied by
praise-singers, dressed in aso ebi to court premises in solidarity with the accused each time he appeared in court to answer to corruption charges.
He noted that the legislators’ act was a
clear indication that some lawmakers in the National Assembly were “out
to make the job of eradicating corruption, or, at least, stemming it to
the barest minimum, by Buhari’s administration more complex and
difficult than ever envisaged.”
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