THE
Presidency has described Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti State as a confused man
in need of prayers.
Reacting to
Fayose’s allegation linking the president’s wife, Aisha Buhari to US
Congressman William Jefferson’s bribery scandal for which the American lawmaker
was convicted in 2009, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and
Publicity, Malam Garba Shehu, described the link as laughable.
“Ordinarily,
the Presidency would have ignored Fayose because he is a man childishly
obsessed with the desire to grab the headlines and insulting people at will
because of his incurably boorish instincts.”
Garba
explained in a statement that the Presidency chose to react to disabuse the
minds of Nigerians who might innocently be misled by what he called “Fayose’s
shame- less and blatant distortion of facts.”
Shehu stated
further that, “ignoring Fayose carries the risk of giving traction and
credibility to outright and brazen falsehoods inconsistent with the status of
anybody that calls himself a governor or leader.”
The
presidential media aide said Mrs. Buhari “had no direct, indirect or the
remotest connection with William Jefferson’s corruption scandal in the United
States.”
Shehu
challenged Fayose to tell Nigerians “if the so-called Aisha whose pictures he
proudly, but ignorantly shared, was the same Aisha married to President
Muhammadu Buhari, or if the Aisha of his idle imagination had any relationship
by blood or any relationship in whatever form, with President Buhari’s wife.”
Meanwhile,
Ekiti House of Assembly has asked the EFCC to immediately defreeze Fayose’s
bank ac- count.
The
lawmakers described the action as ultra vires.
They said a
citizen’s ac- count could not be frozen without a court order and since a
sitting governor could not be listed in a case before a court of law on account
of his immunity, the action was null and void.
It said the
order formed part of the resolution of the House, which also witnessed passing
of a vote ofconfidence in Fayose, at plenary yesterday.
However, the
EFCC yesterday, said there would be no sacred cows in its antigraft war.
Maintaining
the stand of the commission in the wake of attacks from sympathisers of
governor Fayose, whose personal account was frozen on Monday, spokesman of the
commission, Wilson Uwujaren said EFCC “is not afraid of anyone who indulged in
corrupt practices.”
Speaking on
a radio programme monitored in Abuja, yesterday, Uwujaren said the commission
was not afraid to perform its duty.
“EFCC will
go after any corruptly exposed persons, there will be no sacred cows, be it
members of the APC or PDP or any party, EFCC will go after you if we found
reasons to do so, EFCC is not afraid of any one.” He spoke against the backdrop
of the commission’s freezing of Fayose’s personal account.
Uwujaren
added that, what the agency did was to take preemptive measures once
investigations discovered a trend in the move- ment of huge deposit.
“We have not
done anything wrong; we are within the law guiding ouroperations,” he added.
Governor Fayose had accused EFCC of violating section 308 of the 1999
Constitution, which confers immunity on serving state governors and some political
officers against
prosecution.
In a related
development, Ondo State Governor, Olusegun Mimiko has urged the president to
call the EFCC to order.
Speaking in
his capacity as chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Governors’
Forum, he urged Buhari to “immediately intervene and rescue the country “from
what he described as “gross abuse of the constitution.
“The action
of the antigraft agency portrays the nation as one in crisis. What has happened
is a blatant and violent infraction on the provision of the constitution and
our democracy.”
Also, Ekiti
State chapter of the PDP has condemned the EFCC’s action.
The party
described the act as an indecent practice in democracy.
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