AS Nigerians await the decision of President Muhammadu Buhari to either replace or re-present Mr Ibrahim Magu as the chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Presidency has said it is yet to be formally informed of the decision by the Senate to reject Magu’s nomination for the position.
Special Adviser to the President on Media, Mr. Femi Adesina, disclosed this, on Friday, while speaking with Tribune not Thenigerialawyer, adding that the president could not take any action until he was formally informed by the Senate.
“As we speak, the Senate is yet to officially inform the president of its decision on the matter.
“The president cannot do anything for now as he is yet to get the details of what transpired during the Senate’s sitting on Thursday. In that wise, we have to wait until the president is officially informed of the decision by the Senate”, he said.
It will be recalled that the upper legislative chamber of the National Assembly had, on Thursday, rejected the nomination of Magu, the acting chairman of the EFCC as the substantive chairman of the commission.
President Buhari had, in July, nominated Magu alongside others to the board of the commission and subsequently forwarded their names to the Senate for confirmation.
However, the screening and confirmation process had been dogged by controversy, a development that led to protests at the entrance of the National Assembly in October and November.
But after a closed session which lasted two and half hours on Thursday, the Senate resolved not to confirm Magu and, instead, forwarded the names of the other nominees to its committee on anti-corruption for legislative action.
The legislators, who hinged their decision on adverse security reports, said they could not proceed and confirm the nomination of Magu as the executive chairman of EFCC.
“Accordingly, the Senate hereby rejects the said nomination and has returned the said nomination to Mr President for further action”, the Senate spokesman, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, had said in a statement issued on Thursday.
Meanwhile, Mr Ibrahim Magu, on Friday said accountability, probity and transparency are crucial in the protection of investments.
He made this known when a management team of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) visited him in Abuja.
Magu, in a statement by EFCC spokesman, Mr Wilson Uwujaren, commended the collaborative efforts between the two agencies which he said had led to recovery of stolen monies.
“The work is so enormous but the collective efforts and collaboration are absolutely necessary so that a lot of ground will be covered, ” he said.
He assured the SEC team of EFCC’s commitment to its mandate and implementation of the MoU between the SEC and the anti-graft agency, adding that joint training would be organised in future to bridge the gap between both agencies.
Magu, according to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), however, advised the SEC to always tip off the EFCC before suspension of erring brokers to increase the chances of successful investigations and recovery of money.
Earlier, the Director-General of SEC, Mr Mounir Gwarzo, who led the delegation, decried the limitations to the commission’s enforcement authority.
Gwarzo said over the years, this had hampered the SEC’s effectiveness in recovering money lost by investors to fraudulent brokers and dealers.
He said that the close collaboration between the SEC and the EFCC had yielded numerous mutual benefits including “invaluable training of SEC staff by the EFCC as well as an MoU in the works’’.
Gwarzo also said that several criminal cases against defaulters of SEC policies that were not under the SEC’s jurisdiction had been sent to the EFCC, and feed backs received on their status.
The director general stressed that closer collaboration between both agencies would go a long way in restoring confidence of local and foreign investors.
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