Governor of Zamfara, Abdulaziz Yari has threatened a showdown with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for accusing him of diverting part of Paris Club loan refunds for personal use.
Yari, who is also Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) told journalists on Thursday in Abuja that he would formally write the Federal Government to complain about the antics of the commission`s Chairman, Ibrahim Magu against other governors.
Yari is accused of diverting N500m and $500,000 from the Paris Club refunds made by the Federal Government, in favour of the 36 states of the federation, to personal use.
“I am going to write to the Federal Government that enough is enough; that either the EFCC does its work or we do a show down with it,’’ Yari said.
The NGF chairman explained that the Governors Forum is in full support of the anti-graft war, but it is against the style being used by EFCC to prosecute the war.
He urged the anti-graft agency to focus on the fight against corruption instead of using its mandate to seek personal vendetta.
He stressed that no governor would walk into any bank’s strong room in connivance with its officials, or deep his hands into public coffers as was being alleged by the commission in some cases.
The NGF Chairman said it was unfortunate that the EFCC, in most instances, acted on petitions sent to it without conducting proper investigation.
“You can’t just say because somebody wrote a petition, then, you say you are working on it without doing your own due diligent investigation,” Yari said.
Speaking on project implementation in states, the governor said; “I believe EFCC does not have its own engineers to quantify to know what is exactly on ground."
He said project cost deferred from state to state because of their different geographical terrain.
“A project that is done in Rivers for N2 million, in Zamfara, may be about N150, 000.
“You cannot say the price of things in Rivers should be the same in Zamfara or somewhere else.
‘’The terrain is entirely different so is the cost and risk which should be taken into consideration,” he said.
The Chairman advised that if the commission suspected that any state project was over-inflated, it should engage the services of a quantity surveyor to ascertain the truth position of thing.
According to Yari, there is a procedure for every project to be executed by any governor before a contract is awarded.
“Like in Zamfara, we have finance and general purpose committee which is in charge of tender and some states have tender board where the work is initiated from.
“There is documentation, memo raised, approved by the council and finally assented to by the governor. “
He said governors were ready to support the commission, adding, however, that properly thing must be done in the course of fighting corruption in the country.
He advised the commission to ensure proper investigation for effective fight against corruption in the country to have meaning.
 |
|
