Cabal At Buhari’s Presidency Agrees To Free Senate President Saraki If He Frustrates Confirmation Of EFCC Chair, Magu

BY SAHARA REPORTERS

A cabal made up of high-level appointees in President Muhammadu Buhari’s office has struck a deal with Senate President Bukola Saraki to cease all forms of prosecution against him if he would agree to block the confirmation of Ibrahim Magu as chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). Mr. Saraki has had a series of legal losses in his bid to stop his multiple prosecutions for false asset declaration and money laundering. The senator’s latest legal misfortune came earlier today when a panel of the Court of Appeal dismissed his effort to stop his trial.

Mr. Saraki has had a series of legal losses in his bid to stop his multiple prosecutions for false asset declaration and money laundering. The senator’s latest legal misfortune came earlier today when a panel of the Court of Appeal dismissed his effort to stop his trial.

However, Mr. Buhari’s Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, the Director-General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Lawal Daura, as well as the Attorney General of the Federal, Abubakar Malami are conspiring to frustrate Mr. Saraki’s prosecution, according to a finding of a lengthy investigation by our correspondent. Since his appointment as the EFCC’s acting chairman, Mr. Magu has faced unusual impediments from Mr. Kyari and other members of the cabal, all of them members of an inner circle within the Presidency.

Our investigations revealed that Mr. Magu got on the bad side of the president’s Chief of Staff when he refused to drop investigations against Sahara Energy, a company in which Mr. Kyari has a substantial interest. Mr. Magu also incurred the anger of the Chief of Staff when he refused to accept a deal to free Jide Omokore, a businessman with ties to former Petroleum Minister Diezani Alison-Madueke.

Our investigative correspondent learned that Mr. Omokore had made efforts to see President Buhari twice with the assistance of the Chief of Staff and offered bribes to Mr. Kyari and his team. Our investigator also learned that Mr. Kyari had also promised Mr. Omokore that he would be off the hook once he paid back a mere N500 million as restitution, even though the businessman accumulated billions of dollars through fraudulent oil swap deals and questionable acquisition of oil assets arranged by former Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Alison-Madueke.

The EFCC’s Magu scuttled Mr. Kyari’s deal with the oil tycoon when he not only arrested Mr. Omokore but also detained and arraigned him in court for money laundering.

On his part, Attorney General Malami may have joined the conspiracy to fire Mr. Magu from the EFCC because the AGF is close to interests that see Mr. Magu as a threat. Also, a source close to the AGF told our correspondent that Mr. Malami was upset that the EFCC boss was not taking directives from him regarding issues of who to prosecute or not a decision that made him set up a national protection commission domiciled in his office. For instance, on several occasion when the EFCC played a major role in the arraignment and prosecution of Senator Saraki, the AGF and several members of his team, including the Solicitor-General of the Federation and the Director of Public Prosecution, had put enormous pressure on Rotimi Jacobs, the independent prosecutor in charge of the case.

Soon after Mr. Magu’s appointment, the AGF had written a scathing report addressed to President Buhari stating why he was completely opposed to Mr. Magu’s confirmation as the substantive EFCC chairman. Based on Mr. Malami’s prompting, Chief of Staff Kyari and the DSS Director-General went to work to find dirt on Mr. Magu. It did not take long before they found out that the National Security Adviser, Babagana Monguno, was a strong backer of the EFCC chair. Mr. Kyari and his team also discovered that both Mr. Monguno and Mr. Magu had been close friends with a former Air Force officer and a member of the Presidential Arms Investigation Panel, Air Commodore Umar Mohammed (rtd).

In June, DSS agents raided Commodore Mohammed’s home and detained him on allegations that he received bribes from some suspects accused of stealing funds budgeted for arms. SaharaReporters learned that, while in DSS detention, Mr. Mohammed was pressured to implicate both Mr. Magu and Mr. Monguno as persons for whom he was collecting bribes from former Nigerian military officers under investigation. However, Mr. Mohammed refused to budge. In retaliation, the DSS refused to release him despite several court orders to do so. Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, one of the judges who gave an order for Commodore Mohammed’s release, himself became a victim of a late-night raid by the DSS two weeks as DSS agents began hunting down judges accused of corruption.

When DSS agents could not get Commodore Mohammed to implicate Mr. Monguno and Mr. Magu, they wrote a report claiming that the detained former officer had been paying the rent for Mr. Magu’s home in Abuja. They also alleged that Mr. Magu once flew to Kano on a private jet owned by the detained air force general. When the DSS eventually charged Commodore Mohammed to court, they made no mention of his being a front for Mr. Monguno and Mr. Magu. Instead, he was accused of being in possession of guns with an expired license and $1million allegedly found at his home.

SaharaReporters learned that, as part of the internal conspiracy to stall Mr. Magu’s confirmation, the Chief of Staff, Kyari, refused to forward a letter to the Senate requesting for confirmation of the EFCC boss. However, while President Buhari was in the United Kingdom in June 2016 for a short vacation and medical checkup, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo invoked his powers as Acting President to compel the Chief of Staff to send a letter to the Senate asking for Mr. Magu’s confirmation.

A reluctant Mr. Abba Kyari sent the letter. However, as soon as President Buhari returned the Chief of Staff showed him “mountains of security reports,” including some that claimed Mr. Magu was leaking presidential secrets to Saharareporters and other news media. The source also disclosed that Mr. Buhari wanted to know if Mr. Magu owned expensive homes, huge bank accounts or had ever received proceeds of corruption, to which the COS reportedly answered in affirmative.

A source at the Presidency told our correspondent that President Buhari insisted that, since he ceded power to the VP, everything Mr. Osinbajo did while was away could not be reversed.

According to one source, President Buhari did not want to use Mr. Magu’s confirmation to bargain with Senator Saraki whom he loathes, hence the president did nothing to lobby the Senate President to confirm the EFCC chair even when Mr. Saraki met with him to ask for directives on what to do with Magu.

Our investigation discovered that Mr. Saraki has been an active player in the plot to stop Mr. Magu. The EFCC chair had offended the senator twice during his political career. During the senator’s tenure as Governor of Kwara State, Mr. Magu was in charge of the dreaded “Governance Team” set up by the Nuhu Ribadu-led EFCC to go after corrupt state governors between 2003 and 2009. Mr. Saraki was investigated and was due for arrest when Mr. Ribadu was kicked out of the EFCC after he managed to arrest former Governor James Ibori of Delta State. Mr. Saraki then shopped for and recommended Farida Waziri as Mr. Ribadu’s replacement. As soon as Mrs. Waziri was firmly planted as the chairperson of the EFCC, she went after Mr. Magu, got him arrested and detained on the flimsy excuse that EFCC documents were found on his laptop in Lagos. Mr. Magu spent weeks in detention in 2008 and was subsequently freed and redeployed to the Nigeria police.


Also, as soon as Mr. Magu was appointed to head the EFCC, he arrested Mr. Saraki’s wife, Toyin Saraki, and interrogated her for hours. EFCC officials said Mrs. Saraki wilted under the intense interrogation and offered “very helpful information about her husband’s financial misdeeds.”

SaharaReporters learned that Mr. Magu has made efforts on his own to reach out to Senators to confirm him. However, our investigators learned that some of the top senators demanded that he drop investigations against them or hand over their files to them for destruction before they would back his confirmation. Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, whom Mr. Magu disgraced earlier this year after he was given an award by the EFCC liaison to the National Assembly, reportedly tried to extract apologies from Mr. Magu while secretly filming their encounter. Also, Senator Stella Oduah, a former Aviation Minister, went to meet Mr. Magu in his office in the company of a former Secretary to the Federal Government, Pius Anyim, to pledge her support so long as Mr. Magu was willing to drop investigations relating to her multimillion dollar airport renovation projects during her ministerial tenure under former President Goodluck Jonathan.

Also, former Governor Goodwill Akpabio of Akwa Ibom State reportedly asked that Mr. Magu soft-pedals on a myriad of corruption cases against him.

Two EFCC sources told SaharaReporters that Mr. Magu tactically decided to slow down on prosecuting high-profile corruption cases in order to advance his confirmation. However, his confirmation woes appear even more complicated as several targets of EFCC investigations have been pressuring Senators not to confirm him.

Mr. Saraki is coordinating onslaughts on Mr. Magu while regularly telling lobbyists for the EFCC chairman that new conditions must be met before he would move forward on the confirmation. According to one of our sources, Mr. Saraki is demanding that some seasoned EFCC investigators who handled his case be transferred out of the agency back to the police. He had also required that Mr. Magu forward to him all files relating to high- profile investigations of senators. Our source said the Senate President appeared to want the documents to use them either to control other senators or buy their loyalty.

One source said Attorney General Malami had already fulfilled the first part of the agreement between him and Saraki. Last month, the AGF’s office suddenly withdrew forgery charges against Mr. Saraki and his deputy, Mr. Ekweremadu, claiming that prosecutors did not have a watertight case against the two senators. At the next adjourned date, charges were also dropped against two senior National Assembly staffers who aided the forgery of National Assembly rules that led to the controversial election of Mr. Saraki and Mr. Ekweremadu in 2015.

Our source stated that the next case to suffer would be the assets declaration case against Senator Saraki at the Code of Conduct Tribunal. According to the source, Rotimi Jacobs, the independent lawyer handling the case, was being pressured to withdraw from it to enable more malleable prosecutors to take over. The source said the strategy was to prevail on the judge to conclude the trial without imposing any significant sentence.

Mr. Saraki, who is currently in Geneva, is assuring those lobbying on behalf of Mr. Magu he would get the EFCC chairman “confirmed” as soon as the cabal at the Presidency sabotages all the anti-corruption cases against him and Mr. Magu promises not to go after some persons of interest to him.

Source: http://saharareporters.com/2016/10/27/cabal-buhari’s-presidency-agrees-free-senate-president-saraki-if-he-frustrates

game of thrones season 8. Our Sp na badt guy

please someone should repost

Drama and horse trading! All na corruption fight o!
Loads of conjectures in the op but still, nothing is impossible in Nigeria.

Cabal or Calabash e no concern me make the economy work or step down!!! is it too much to ask?

Sahara Reporters did it again. The more Saraki tries to lobby for his freedom for crimes he committed the more he gets entangled in the web he solely spins. He will never escape this one for real. This should be the most useless set of Senators to make up the upper chamber in the history of this Country. Dogara must not be spared too. Terrible set of expensive rogues.

Hmmm. Nigeria? Wen will we put our acts rights and our national interest above our selfish interest?

I want Magu confirmed on d strenght dat he can do dis job without fear or favour.

Politics is indeed a dirty game.

So many behind the scene lobbying takes place....

the more we look, the less we see especially when we are not part of the cabal.

Two good to be true

However, Mr. Mohammed refused to budge.
In retaliation, the DSS refused to release him despite several
court orders to do so. Justice Nnamdi Dimgba, one of the
judges who gave an order for Commodore Mohammed’s
release, himself became a victim of a late-night raid by the
DSS two weeks as DSS agents began hunting down judges
accused of corruption.

There goes the fight against corruption, this guys keep giving nigerians reason to doubt the charade called anti corruption fight...

Imagine Daura lead DSS arresting Judges because they refuse to play ball and some nigerians were busy hailing this blatant display of stupidity...

No matter how you look at it the corruption fight has been rubbished because of those handling it, as it is now anybody can be tagged/victim if you refuse to play ball...

To top it all this is been supervised by the self styled Mr integrity (PMB)...SMH

Game of thrones in Aso villa...power dey sweet like this,yet Abati want us to believe him when he wrote the spiritual side of Aso rock.

Why the demon in Aso no kill all ds corrupt ppu.

The owners of the country have spoken.

Where's lala

post too long jor

Power play , that's why I keep telling zombies, don't just take whatever you read/hear on the media on the surface, lots of horse trading goes on underneath which you're not aware of.
Despite the much touted anti corruption fight, the country's set up is strategically defined to frustrate the corruption fight and in this regard, APC is no different from PDP, let's just say they're even worse because they came in primarily with the anticorruption mantra yet corruption has thrived soo well under them.
From the ministerial appointments of shady characters, to Saraki's ish, then Dogara's spat with Jibrin and then Buhari turning the other eye in corrupt matters involving his top level appointees including the COAS , it's obvious to the unborn that anticorruption is just a word.

No hope for the common man with all this stories........

This government is just out of it.
0/100.

My fellow nigerians, where are we.

See our leaders playing chess game with our country.

we are just too docile as citizens, too comfortable with whatever our leaders shun out for us,

in the face of this economic hardship,
using corruption cases to negotiate for power, Magu fall my hand, been over ambitious to head EFCC hereby soft pedal on corruption cases.
do your work diligently and dnt give a Bleep about saraki.

Saraki in return, requesting for fellow senators case files, to use against them, anytime they go against his wish as senate president.

men, we are doom as a nation.

Disjointed piece of crap

Yawn. So both APC and PDP are fighting magu who is trying to survive by using APC propaganda media people, who are trying to frustrate an APC cabal which is in turn trying to frustrate an APC president who opposes his wife's lobbying for APC politicians but still thinks his problem is PDP. How confusing has our politics become?

Nigeria my country

So Both the Executive ,NASS, and the JUDICIARY are still gang of criminals no exception.

Naija! I hail o

It is not for nothing that it has been said that politics is the last refuge of scoundrels. Gangsterism is a means 
for amassing wealth quickly. Further, by entering politics, gangsters secure immunity from prosecution by the law.They get respectability too. Is it any wonder that 
gangsters are flocking to join leading political parties to buy their way out of grief that is always hovering over their lives?

Bunch of gangsters!

One law for the South, another for Northerners

[size=20pt]


This same cabal will bury Buhari Alive.



IStandWithAishaBuhari[/size]

Ghen ghen

stsinner:
game of thrones season 8. Our Sp na badt guy

He doesnt have to be chairman he could be ACTING CHAIRMAN FOREVER they dont know anything
Just like my friend, he has been suspended from work since 2007 just because if they terminate his contract directly,he is entitled to like 8million pay off

Oh please don't free him

How Nigerian politics looks like

Noted pls