By Omeiza Ajayi
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has flayed President Bola Tinubu’s directive to the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission, ICPC, to investigate the so-called Presidential Foreign Intervention Promotion Council, PFIPC, insisting that a government cannot simultaneously be judge and jury in a matter in which it is itself under suspicion.
“What Nigerians demanded was never another internal government investigation. We demanded an independent investigation. The Federal Government is itself central to this controversy because the questions being asked concern the conduct of public institutions, official processes and possible institutional failures. In every constitutional democracy, a party whose conduct is under scrutiny cannot simultaneously appoint itself investigator, judge and final authority over its own case,” he stated.
Atiku described the move as a reluctant response to the seven-day ultimatum he had issued, but insisted the move had only exposed contradictions in the Presidency’s own account of the scandal.
Atiku, in a statement issued by his Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, Phrank Shaibu, said the directive amounts to an admission that the police investigation the Presidency had relied on was either incomplete or incapable of answering the questions Nigerians have continued to ask.
