The president owes himself an even greater duty – protecting his personal reputation as a fearless anti-corruption crusader. He can only do so when he takes allegations against his friends and staffers seriously and acts. By appearing to refuse to act, the president would be indicting himself in the court of public opinion.
This week, the big story has been that President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the Senate in response to the lawmakers’ indictment of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, and their call for his removal and prosecution. The letter provided an explanation, or rather, some excuses why the president would not act. The letter depicts a very high level of incompetence on the part of whoever wrote it but above all appears to make the argument that the presidential team can engage in corruption without consequence, which is the most direct route for the Buhari presidency to lose its credibility as a bastion of anti-corruption.
In the letter, the residency claims that the SGF was not given fair hearing before the indictment. Those of us who follow the media can all recall the invitation sent to Mr. Babachir to come and defend himself and his refusal to do so. How can the presidency claim it was not aware of the invitation and dare use its self-inflicted amnesia as an excuse to refuse to consider the substantive issue? Are they saying that people who are invited to testify and respond to questions and they refuse to do so, or run away, are innocent simply because they run away.
The other excuse is even more pathetic. The letter claims that the report was signed by three of the nine members of the ad hoc committee and that therefore it is a minority report that does not need to be considered. I have never heard such a lame excuse in my life. Is it for the presidency to determine that a Senate report is a minority or majority report? In any case, the Senate had repeatedly affirmed that the institution stands by the content of the report, so I find it incredible that the presidency would seek to sweep the matter under the carpet by such a claim.
The most disturbing element of the story is that the president had himself asked his Attorney-General of the Federation to look into the allegations and the letter did not say anything about the findings given back to him. My greatest professional concern is the sheer incompetence displayed in the letter. The message I get is that the presidency lacks competent technicians to craft excuses for the president. The issue here isn’t that presidents should have teams that are capable of giving good excuses. The concern is that whoever wrote such an important letter so badly does not have the capacity to do anything rational or sensible. More important, there are no control mechanisms in the system for filtering out arguments and reasoning that cannot stand.
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