by Alexander O. Onukwue

The long-running clash of interests around the confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as the EFCC Chairman is about to take Nigeria on a conversation it should not be having.

President Buhari’s request to the Senate to confirm Magu has been turned down twice on the grounds of the DSS reports. The DSS, like the EFCC, is an agency under the Presidency, and that irony of the Presidency fighting itself has received proper coverage.

The Executive has refused to budge on Magu. Osinbajo had said after the Senate’s second rejection that it would not be out of place to resubmit Magu for the third time. More recently, there is controversy over his opinion that the name does not even need to be submitted anyway.

Osinbajo and by extension the Buhari administration’s insistence on keeping Magu as the head of EFCC is supposed to prove a point, but it is also problematic. There has been nothing done to debunk the DSS report which puts some blemish on Magu’s credential and ability to lead the anti-graft body as a substantive Chairman. The DSS has been used by the Buhari Government to raid members of the Judiciary; these widely-criticised raids have been defended by the Executive’s defenders, especially Femi Falana.

Magu continues to be the choice of the Executive in order to stand by him, but that also means they undermine one of its other agencies. Osinbajo insists that as long as he and Buhari are President, Magu will be EFCC Chairman, coming across as an ‘over my dead body’ statement in Nigerian parlance.

Generally speaking, in Nigeria, the rule of the thumb is not to go over the dead body route. A point of integrity and trust are good and well, but the continued drag over Magu has distracted this Government for too long, against what the Nigerian people should be benefitting from.

Editor