"The President – whoever he is – has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.”
The prologue
to this piece was part of the farewell address to the American people delivered
in January 1953 by President Harry Truman. It was a categorical reference to
the concept of “The buck stops here,” which Truman, 33rd president
of the United States, invented and espoused diligently. So passionate was
Truman about this principle that he made the phrase into a desk sign that stood
on his desk throughout his tenure.
“The BUCK
STOPS here! This phrase is an irrefutable reminder of where the ultimate power
lies in a democratic presidency, which one is minded to recommend to President
Muhammadu Buhari in these very worrying times, especially in the wake of the
Nigerian senate’s despicable rejection of his nominee, Ibrahim Magu, as
substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. Clearly,
if nothing else, Buhari should know that that rejection sounded the death knell
for his vaunted war against corruption, as well as constitutes a huge
embarrassment to his person and office.
And he
should also take notice that rather than being the end, the senate’s act is
just the beginning of the process of giving full expression to a familiar
refrain of his and numerous other lieutenants in the APC administration:
corruption is fighting back. Yes, corruption is fighting back, and the Buhari
administration needs to summon the will to repel the attack and crush the
monster. Otherwise, as Buhari himself has often stated, it will kill us. With
the decision to block Magu from becoming EFCC chairman, there is no way
corruption won’t kill us eventually if Buhari does not act like a true
president.
Now, it’s
no longer about Magu, nor an utterly Senate populated by over-feds whom
Nigerians would be too glad to do away with as quickly as possible. It’s about
Buhari. It’s about the kind of president he wants to be, and whether he wants
to continue to run a heavily tainted and compromised presidency where the one
who runs the show is the highly discredited Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, a man
who has been linked with multiple acts of corruption and who on the eve of the
2015 elections denounced Buhari as a “serial loser.”
In the
subtle design to rubbish Buhari’s government and preserve the old order, Abba
Kyari is ably supported by other willing collaborators among them the equally
unpleasant DSS boss, Lawal Daura, and the senate president Bukola Saraki. But now
is the time to urge Buhari to toe the path of Truman and point to Abba Kyari
and the rest of the destructive gang where the buck stops.
With an
impressive credential of personal integrity, and with fervent pre and post
election resolve to wage an all-out war against a scourge that has gone down as
the biggest cog in Nigeria’s development – a resolve for which he received an
unequivocal endorsement from the vast majority of Nigerians – will Buhari
buckle under the unrelenting onslaught of a vicious cabal whose singular interest
is to perpetuate corruption as the directive principle of state policy? Will he
continue to fold his arms and look the other way when his arch ally in the
anti-corruption war, the man who has demonstrated rare courage in dealing
corruption an unprecedented blow is being sought out by the cabal for
destruction?
That the
senate did what they did was not altogether surprising. Every discerning
observer saw it coming. After more than one year of Magu as acting chairman, and
six months after receiving a letter from the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo,
requesting the senate to confirm him as substantive chairman of EFCC, the
senators reluctantly rustled up a pathetic engagement with Magu on the day they
had scheduled to go on end-of-year recess. Instead of allowing the man to
appear before them at plenary as the whole world expected, they arranged a sham
executive session where the public was shut out.
It was at
that dubious session that Magu’s fate was purportedly sealed. While the world
was still waiting for the chambers to be thrown open and Magu invited for
screening, it was a guilt-ridden, tremulous spokesman of the senate, Aliyu Sabi
Abdullahi, that appeared to read a terse statement announcing the senate's
decision that Magu was not “fit” to be confirmed as substantive chairman based
on a security report submitted by the DSS.
What the spokesman failed to tell
his audience was that there were indeed two security reports on Magu written the
same day by the DSS. The one that clearly acquitted Magu and certified him
qualified to lead the EFCC was discarded by the senate, and the negative report
was picked just because they had an evil agenda that must be satisfied no
matter what it takes. No wonder he refused to take questions.
It will be
interesting to see how Buhari reacts to all of this. His reaction should
determine the status of The Presidential Advisory Committee on Anti-Corruption
(PACAC) headed by Professor Itse Sagay, going forward. If Buhari would not see
through the shenanigans of the Abba Kyaris, the Bukola Sarakis and assert
himself as president by insisting that Magu remains his choice for the EFCC chair,
Sagay should lead other members of the committee to resign the job and allow
Buhari to fight corruption his own way.
Truly, if
Magu was really corrupt, the Nigerian senate that we know would have filled the
chamber with chorus of "Take a bow; Take a bow!"
Contributed
by: Godwin Onyeacholem is a journalist. He can be reached on
gonyeacholem@gmail.com; Follow him on Twitter @Gonyeacholem
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