Toyin Saraki | credits: www.youtube.com |
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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