Mainagate: Falana urges Buhari to punish indicted officials
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A human rights lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana (SAN), on Sunday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to act fast in imposing appropriate sanctions on government officials who allegedly conspired to bring back a former Chairman of the defunct Presidential Task Force on Pension Reforms, Abdulrasheed Maina, to the country and got the fugitive reinstated into the public service with promotion.
Falana said this was necessary to save the Buhari administration’s anti-corruption policy, whose credibility, he alleged, had been eroded by the Federal Government’s handling of the scandal so far.
Maina was sacked in 2013 after he was declared wanted by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission over corruption allegations involving N2bn pension funds.
Falana said in a statement, titled ‘President Buhari should act with dispatch on Mainagate,’ on Sunday, that the officials who aided Maina back to the country and paid the fugitive his arrears of salaries and allowances said to be totalling N22m “deliberately set out to subvert the anti-corruption policy of the Buhari administration.”
He noted that all officials culpable in the scandal “conspired to expose the administration and the nation to such avoidable shame” and sanctions imposed by the President on them would make or break the administration’s “fight against corruption and impunity.”
He stated, “Although the Federal Government has promised not to sweep the Mainagateunder the carpet, the handling of the monumental scandal so far eroded the credibility of the anti-corruption crusade of the Buhari administration.
“Therefore, the sanctions which the Federal Government will mete out to all the officials who conspired to expose the administration and the nation to such avoidable shame will make or mar (sic) the fight against corruption and impunity which is the cornerstone of the domestic and foreign policy thrust of the administration.
“Time is certainly not on the side of President Buhari!”
Falana’s statement was informed by the claims credited to Maina’s family members during a recent press conference organised by them in Kaduna, accusing the Federal Government of hypocrisy and betrayal.
He noted that the claim by Maina’s family that the Buhari administration invited their son to come and clean up the mess and generate more revenue to the government by blocking leakages, had not been denied.
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