Nigerians are now eagerly awaiting the decision of the government regarding the findings of the special presidential panel headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, which investigated the alleged involvement of the suspended Secretary to the Federal Government, SGF, Babachir Lawal, in the “grass-cutting” contract scam and the alleged stashing of N13 billion in (dollars, pound sterling and naira) in an apartment in Osborne Towers, Ikoyi, by the suspended Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, NIA, Ambassador Ayo Oke, who claimed that the money was meant for covert operations.
The panel would submit its report tomorrow. The decision taken by the federal government has a single potential to either canonise the present administration’s posture on integrity or completely discredit the administration’s remotest nexus with dignity.
Osinbajo’s assignment was a recondite one for the fact that he headed a panel assailed by a disproportionate tripod in the sense that two members of the panel have insidious interest that may influence not only the terms of reference but the tenor of recommendation.
The Attorney General in his earlier investigation of the SGF largely evaded the substance of the senate’s indictment and predicated his report on sundry technicalities seen by the general public as a ploy to exonerate the SGF.
The National Security Adviser, NSA, on the other hand was mentioned as the only senior official of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration with a detailed knowledge of the hidden forex yet he allegedly made no disclosure to the president.
For the panel to be above board therefore, the integrity of the vice president was seen as the only clincher and which had to tower above all primordial interests domiciled in the panel.
It is the minimum expectation of the public that the panel in the course of sittings extracted cogent reason from the NSA why covert operations must be shielded from the president and such volume of cash allowed to lie in a private residence.
The vice president is not a man susceptible to political or primordial interest. It is our minimum expectation that the VP must have recognized the great and compelling need to use the report, the panel would submit tomorrow to President Buhari, as a navigational GPS in the anti-corruption denouement.
► Bukola Ajisola wrote via [email protected]