Presidency fired back at the Igbo leaders under the aegis of Igbo Leaders of Thought. The group is led by constitutional lawyer, Prof. Ben Nwabueze.
Specifically, the Igbo Leaders of Thought faulted the Buhari administration’s prosecution of the war against corruption which it described as selective, saying government was being tele-guided by Generals Ibrahim Gbadamosi Babangida and Abdulsalami Abubakar, both former Heads of State, as well as erstwhile President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The Igbo leaders went ahead to classify the former Nigerian leaders as belonging to what they called “the invisible government of Nigeria.”Reacting to the statement, yesterday, The Presidency said:
“Whoever knows President Buhari will not say that kind of thing of him. Nobody can teleguide President Buhari as a leader because he is a listening leader. He will listen to Chief Obasanjo, he will listen to Dr Jonathan, he will listen to everybody, both high and low; and that is what a good leader should do.
“He will listen to everyone as a leader who is open to all. Nobody should lose sight of the fact that responsibility is his own and he is conscious of that. So, saying that somebody is tele-guiding him cannot be the case.”The Presidency spoke through Senior Special Assistant, Media and Publicity, Mallam Shehu Garba.
Speaking on the intention of government to probe corrupt practices, Garba said that though the administration was not probing anybody at the moment, his principal cannot stop the anti-graft agencies, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission EFCC, and the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offenses Commission, ICPC, from doing their work.
The presidential aide stated that Buhari, who swore to protect the Constitution of the country, cannot turn a deaf ear to the looting of public treasury and crude oil theft.
“People who don’t know him can make those assumptions but those who know him cannot make the mistake of saying this. From his days as a candidate, he said government will not dissipate time and energy on probes. As I speak to you now, President Buhari’s government has not engaged in probes,”he said.
“Government is not probing anybody at the moment. But there are matters that he has turned on the table, going through the processes of investigations by the EFCC, ICPC; whatever, those things are, they must go on. Whatever is on the table must be treated.
“In Nigeria, if people have stolen money running into billions of US Dollars, crude oil in billions of US Dollars, the Constitution of Nigeria does not permit President Buhari to wave that off. He has no power. If the EFCC is investigating the theft of the assets of the country, the President cannot be legally and morally right to stop that from happening. So, this is what is going on”.