The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria (HURIWA) has asked President Muhammadu Buhari to look inwards and select a good Nigerian without blemish other than Ibrahim Magu to be confirmed as substantive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

The group said President Muhammadu Buhari would be doing serious global image demolition on the Nigerian brand if he continues to push for the confirmation of Alhaji. Ibrahim Magu as substantive Chairman of the anti-graft agency even after he has been returned twice as absolutely unfit to hold such a high office in a detailed and meticulously authored reports of the Department of State Services (DSS), a strategic agency of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

“Buhari’s insistence in the face of overwhelming body of evidence built against the choice of Ibrahim Magu by the Department of State Services shows a vote of no confidence on the DSS just as there’s no justification for this persistence as if Nigeria is a place deficient in trustworthy persons who can effectively wage the war against economic crimes other than the controversial Ibrahim Magu.”

“The insistence by President Muhammadu Buhari that the Senate must bypass its in-house rule to confirm Ibrahim Magu as substantive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for an unprecedented third time is damaging to everyone that travels around as a citizen of Nigeria because the message it conveys is that Nigeria harbours mostly corrupt persons who can't be entrusted with such a strategic anti-graft office except only one person known as Ibrahim Magu.

“Let President Muhammadu Buhari look around the country and the world to pick another distinguished Nigerian citizen or he can even borrow a national of another country rather than overheat the polity with his unacceptable persistence to stick to a man whose reputation has been extensively damaged by the federal secret police known as Department of State Services.”

The rights group said it amounted to an unmitigated insult and a total vote of lack of credibility and confidence on the integrity and credibility of the entire institution of the Department of State Services and the Leadership capacity of the Director General, Alhaji Lawal Musa Daura, if President Muhammadu Buhari should shove aside such a comprehensive, concise, clear, unambiguous and extensively damaging claims backed up by empirical evidence generated from sections of intelligence sources that indicted Alhaji Ibrahim Magu of a range of allegations of corruptly enriching himself and divulging classified information to a third party.

“These sets of accusations are too heavy and weighty to be overlooked and hidden under the carpets just so Magu can be railroaded into the substantive office of Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) even with two rejections already by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

HURIWA recalled that the DSS had in a document accused the Acting Chairman of EFCC of “actively sabotaging the country’s anti-graft war”.

HURIWA recalled further that in a leaked memo addressed to the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), Mr. Abubakar Malami, the DSS detailed a variety of alleged misdeeds by Mr. Magu.

The memo according to the Rights group is said to be a response to the AGF’s request for more information and documents relating to the allegations made in the initial DSS memo that apparently provided ammunition with which the Senate shot down Mr. Magu’s confirmation as substantive head of EFCC, brimmed with allegations of misdeeds.

The rights group told President Muhammadu Buhari: “There are well over 10 million competent and qualified Nigerian anti-graft campaigners spread around the world. Let the President pick a candidate from amongst the many who are without such extensively and ethically challenged profile like Ibrahim Magu. For crying out loud, why should the President insist on one person for a job of head of EFCC or did he sign a secret deal with Ibrahim Magu that Nigerians aren’t being told? Please the President should stop making Magu look like one Superman that is indispensable. Nobody in Nigeria is indispensable. Indeed no human being is so indispensable except God.”

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