By Nuel Suji – Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), David Babachir Lawal may be on a collision course with the Senate following his decision not to honour the invitation to appear before the Senate’s Ad-Hoc committee on Mounting Humanitarian Crises in the North East holding Thursday.
The SGF in a personally signed letter addressed to the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Shehu Sani , said he would not honour the committee’s invitation because he had already gone to court over the matter upon which he is being invited and urged the committee chairman to inform other members accordingly.
The letter dated 22nd March 2017 and titled: “Re-Invitation for public hearing”, reads: “Your letter of invitation to appear before the above committee refers.
“I wish to kindly request that you draw the attention of the other members of the committee that I will not be able to appear before the committee primarily because i have gone to court to challenge the invitation among others”.
The SGF also attached the court documents to the letter already confirmed by Shehu Sani who however declared that the committee will go ahead with presentation of its final report to the Senate today with or without SGF’s appearance before them.
The committee had In a letter dated 15th of March, 2017 and addressed to the SGF, summoned him to appear before it today for needed clarification from him on earlier indictment slammed on him over alleged mismanagement of funds given to the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE).
The letter reads: “The Senate at its sitting on 4th October, 2016, debated on a motion “mounting humanitarian crisis in the north east” after which an ad-hoc committee was constituted to among other things.
“The committee was to conduct a public hearing in order to ascertain how much has been released to the Presidential Initiative on the North East (PINE) And also to ascertain how these funds have been utilized from inception to date.
“The committee was also expected to investigate the diversion of grains and other food items from the Strategic Grain Reserves, NEMA and other sources for the IDPs.
“Consequently, the committee held a three day public hearing between 6th to 8th, December, 2016, even though some of the invited stakeholders refused to attend. In order to give them a fair hearing, the committee has resolved to conduct another public hearing. You are hereby invited once more to the public hearing.”
