Magu is the best man for EFCC job, Osinbajo insists

Olalekan Adetayo, Abuja

Vice-President Yemi Osinbajo has said that the Acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, remains the best man for the job despite the rejection of his nomination by the Senate twice.

Osinbajo said this in an interview he granted some journalists and social media practitioners in Lagos on Friday.

His Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Mr. Laolu Akande, made the concluding part of the interview’s transcript available to journalists on Tuesday having made the first part available on Sunday.

The Vice-President said the position of President Muhammadu Buhari and the present administration was that Magu remained the right man for the job despite the damning report of the Director General of the Department of State States, Lawal Daura, which formed the basis of Senate’s position on the EFCC boss.

He said Buhari did not interfere in the security report that nailed Magu because he believed that it was not a good leadership style to do so.

He said the Senate was entitled to whatever position it had taken on the issue.

Osinbajo said, “While you will find, for example, that the DG, DSS, upon the request by the Senate, wrote a security report and sent it.

“Yet, it is up to the President to decide whether he is going to present this candidate. Interfering with the process of a security report is not leadership, that’s obstructing. He is not supposed to interfere.

“If you say, ‘Send your report,’ whatever report you want to send, the man defends himself, and we still believe he is the right person for the job. That is the position that we took when he was presented the second time.

“Of course, the Senate has had their own say on that and they are entitled to take some of the positions they are taking. But the President believes that this is the right man for the job, so he presented him the second time.”

Osinbajo explained that one of the things Buhari had been doing was to ensure that every government agency did its work without direct interference from the President.

He said it was not true that Buhari asked Magu to arrest a former DG of DSS, Ita Ekpeyong; and a former DG of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke.

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