The conflict between the Presidency and the Nigerian Senate appears to have taken a turn for the worse after Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said the upper house of legislature cannot stop the executive from re-presenting nominees who have been rejected by the Red Chamber.
In a video that surfaced online late on Sunday, April 23, Vice President Osinbajo, a professor of law, said there was no provision in the constitution that barred the Presidency from sending back to the Senate names of those it had initially rejected.
In the video seen by NAIJ , Osinbajo, while speaking on rejection of action EFCC chairman Ibrahim Magu, dismissed the seeming disagreement between the Department of State Services and the Presidency.
Osinbajo says no law says the Presidency cannot re-presenting Magu and other rejected nominees.
He noted that while the secret police which released a damning report on Magu and declared him as having failed an integrity test was doing its job well, the Presidency was also within its rights to choose to go ahead with the anti-corruption chief.
Osinbajo then declared full support for the EFCC’s activities in the anti-corruption war of the current administration.
He said: “ I’m fully in support of Ibrahim Magu as EFCC Chair just as the President is fully in support of him as his nominee for the position.”
The over 5-minute long video was tweeted by the Presidency’s official Twitter handle and retweeted by EFCC, the President’s party All Pogressives Congress, Osinbajo’s media aide Laolu Akande and other presidential aides.
We recall that Senate rejected Magu again on Wednesday, March 15 after initially refusing to confirm him as EFCC boss on Thursday, December 15, 2016.
In the second rejection, the acting EFCC boss had appeared to be doing well during his screening for the position on the floor of the Nigerian Senate when controversial Senator Dino Melaye revealed that the upper house of legislature had received a letter saying Magu was not qualified for the job because he failed integrity test. by the secret police.
Meanwhile, Osinbajo-led Presidential Investigate Committee looking into the activities of suspended secretary to the government of the federation Babachir Lawal and National Intelligence Agency Director-General Ayodele Oke
grilled Magu on Friday, April 21 .
The Committee then gave him the go ahead to continue investigations into the N13bn recovered by the EFCC at Ikoyi in Lagos state.
