Head of the Presidential Advisory Committee against Corruption, Prof. Itse Sagay has said that the corruption allegations levelled against the Minister of Power, Works and housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola and his colleague in the Transportation ministry, Mr Rotimi Amaechi as baseless and an attempt to scuttle their chances to become ministers.
In an interview he granted to Punch, the renowned legal academician, he said there were subtle moves by the corrupt persons to stop them from being nominated as ministers because of their solid records.
“We are talking of people’s records; these are people with solid records. And if you look at the whole environment and atmosphere, they were about to be made ministers and a group of very corrupt people wanted to stop them. That’s all. This was because they didn’t want people of high capacity, ability and commitment to be in this government.’
“It was an attempt to scuttle their chances to become ministers; that was the main purpose behind it. You cannot investigate every person based on an allegation that was made; there must be a basis. There must be some level of prima facie, evidence and so on. In these cases, they were just mere allegations.”
He further defended the anti-corruption war of President Muhammadu Buhari, describing the President as an intelligent man who quietly allowed the People’s Democratic Party to fool itself while searching for the best hands to work with him.
“The President is a very intelligent man, knowing they were trying to deprive him of the best hands to run his government, he quietly allowed the PDP to fool itself. After it had finished fooling itself, the President went and took the best and the best, which are the likes of Fashola, Amaechi, Dr. Chris Ngige, and the others. The Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, was the best minister in Shehu Shagari’s government at the time.”
“The President picked a galaxy of stars as his ministers and we are going to see results. So he did the right thing. He knew those people were up to mischief, so he just quietly let them fool themselves and at the end, he did the right thing. They will do great things for this country.”