By Tijjani Isa : Gudaji Kazaure was just being clever, and it is only by half. Perhaps even less. He thought he was smart and could get away with anything just because President Buhari welcomes and loves any idea that keeps our treasury safer.
But he stretched his luck a bit too far.
He set up a committee all by himself, made himself its secretary and 2nd in hierachy to the purported chairman. A chair who happens to be the chief justice of the Federation.
A chairman who as an arbiter of the last resort ordinarily cannot head any other body outside the judicial system else it would contravene the doctrine of the separation of powers between the executive, legislature and the judiciary.
Doing so would also mean there won’t be any impartial judge who would determine the guilt or innocence of whoever might be indicted by Gudaji’s report. That would be the ultimate travesty of justice.
Gudaji also went ahead to also select all by himself, members from across the two tiers of government, the judiciary and the executive to help him unearth a corrupt tendency happening within our national financial institutions, specifically, the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
Curiously he left out his primary turf; selecting no one including any ordinary member colleague of his from the House of Representatives.
Then he sat all by himself to investigate, collect evidences and wrote a report all by himself with no corroborative evidence from the accused, CBN. And that neither the chairman and his deputy nor any other member sat with him anywhere at committee’s secretariat to pour over written and oral evidences since he set up his committee all by himself.
Now, let us for the sake of argument, say Gudaji’s insistence to see the president was to present to him his report, which obviously means it is a minority one. Why should it be so? Was there a disagreement between Gudaji on one hand and the rest of the members that he opted to write his own report?
If it were so, where is the majority report signed by all the members?
One important issue begging for an answer is how did a member of the legislature by-passed his principal officers like the Speaker, deputy speaker, house leader and chairman house committee on banking and insurance to embark on a crusade of this magnitude all by himself?
If it were as a result of cordial relationship between the executive and the legislature, which this one is unprecedented, did he get to select who became a member of his committee and the president’s “signature” is appended there to show approval and no one raised an eyebrow?
Something is horribly wrong somewhere and I bet a forgery of the president’s signature cannot easily be dismissed.
This issue is not about stamp duty at all. It is something very sinister and Gudaji is in the center of it probably for the purpose of blackmail and forgery.
