Updated: Again, Senate rejects nomination of Magu as EFCC Chairman

The Nigerian Senate has rejected the nomination of Ibrahim Mustafa Magu as the Chairman of the  Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). This is the second time Magu is facing the Senate. In a session three months ago, his confirmation was turned down based on a DSS report which was made available to Senate.

In today’s session, which saw Magu give details of what the fight against corruption means to him, the role of President Muhammadu Buhari in the fight and details of the amount recovered so far, the acting EFCC Chairman tried in vain to convince lawmakers that he is the right man to head the anti-graft agency.

In rejecting Magu  for the second time the Senate hinged its decision on the same report, pointing out that it is customary that those to be cleared for national positions have to be cleared by the DSS.

Senator Dino Melaye in particular read Paragraph 14 of the DSS report on Magu and said that : “In the light of the foregoing, Magu has failed the integrity test and will eventually constitute a liability to the anti-corruption stand of the current government.”

Replying Melaye, Magu slammed the DSS saying that the organisation had shown it had a problem when it released two different reports on him to the Senate late last year.

“What do you say about credibility of that agency?” he queried.

The Clerk of the House however denied that Senate received two letters from the DSS.

According to him, what was received was a letter on October 3, 2016.

The Senate, he said, requested that the DSS re-confirm its integrity report on Magu. This was what was received on Wednesday and to which Melaye referred during questioning of Magu.

Before the decision on Magu’s rejection was reached, a confident Magu he made several disclosures about the driving force in the fight against corruption and how far he is ready to go to root out the menace. “Deizina went to London with her clique that perpetuated the crime to defraud Nigeria,” he is reported by the twitter handle of the Senate to have said. “They are on the run and I will get them.”

Pressed on if the body language of President Buhari is was what determines who the EFCC investigates, Magu replied that “the commitment of Buhari to the fight against corruption is not in doubt.” He also states that he (Magu) is aware that the national assembly is also an organ of government that is involved in the fight against corruption.

In what seemed to be an indictment, Magu was quizzed about how authentic he considered the EFCC to be as an institution which seems to be conducting media trials on the pages of newspapers before cases are even heard in court. And how the organisation is fighting corruption within the limits of the law.

Magu who has been EFCC Chairman since 9, November 2015 said that “once we can remove corruption in Nigeria, everything will be okay.”

Magu who hails from Bornu state studied Accountancy at the University of Maiduguri. He is a trained financial crimes investigator with background in forensic accounting. He trained at the FBI institute and London Metropolitan Police institute. He onced served as head of the EFCC’s Economic Governance Unit (EGU) during the tenure of Nuhu Ribadu.