. Don’t humiliate Magu, says Transparency International
Counsel to the embattled acting Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Oluwatoyin Ojaomo, said on Monday that forces behind corruption in Nigeria are more powerful and vicious than the raging COVID-19 pandemic.
Ojaomo spoke on Channels Television’s ‘Politics Today’ programme while reacting to Magu’s probe by a Presidential panel.
According to the lawyer, Magu is being investigated because of the discrepancies in the recoveries he announced publicly and the funds remitted to the government’s treasury
He claimed that Magu had remitted more than the money he had declared.
“When you are fighting corruption, the forces behind corruption are so powerful; they are more powerful than Covid-19. You can imagine what is happening. Instead of Magu to be celebrated, those powerful corrupt persons, who have the media backing them, are trying to call a dog a bad name so they can hang it,” he said.
Magu’s argued that discrepancies in figures would always occur because asset recovery was a continuous process.
Head, Transparency International, Auwal Musa aka Rafsanjani, said Magu’s experience had again underscored the need for a legal framework on asset recovery and management.
Rafsanjani warned that if Magu was humiliated, it could also discourage those genuinely dedicated to the fight against corruption.
He said, “I don’t think it is a good development for persons who are fighting corruption to be framed.
“Instead of looking at Magu, we should look at the legal and institutional deficits in the area of recovery.”