The Senate on Monday said its decisions on the sack of Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal and the rejection of the nomination of Ibrahim Magu as the substantive chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) were not directive to the executive arm of government.
This was disclosed by the Senate Leader, Mr. Mohammed Ndume when fielding questions from the State House Correspondents in Abuja.
He said: “It’s not an order we are giving. The Senate resolution is a recommendation, it’s not a law. What the Senate considered is work in progress because it was an interim report. It is the same public that are interested and worried to know what have we done as a Senate about those allegations.
“The committee issued an interim report and the interim report seemed to indict the SGF, the consequences of that indictment is what they recommended but we are not there yet because the report itself is interim.
“Ok, we take the interim report, we give the public until the whole investigation is concluded. I hear, coming from the SGF that he has not been given a fair hearing, so the hearing has not finished. We can give him an ample of time to go before the committee and clear himself.”
On the rejection of the nomination of Magu as EFCC chairman, Ndume said: “No, no no. Let me say categorically that the Senate did not reject Ibrahim Magu as the chairman. What happened was that when we selected his confirmation for Thursday, then we had an issue or a letter from the Department of State Security (DSS) that could not allow us to continue with the confirmation without further clarifications.
“So, we now concluded that since we have a letter that we cannot ignore, we cannot do the confirmation. So, it was not that we sat down to take a decision that we have rejected Ibrahim Magu. So, I want that to come out clearly. We specifically asked the chairman on media to issue a statement.
“What we said was that on that Thursday the Senate could not go ahead with the confirmation of Mr. Ibrahim Magu and that we are in possession of a letter from the Department of State Service which requires clarification from Mr. President, who is the head of the government. That was what happened.Even if the rejection is going to come, it is not going to come from the Senate because we have not done anything anyway.”
