By Sumaila Ogbaje
Abuja – The Coalition for Good Governance and Change Initiative (CGGCI), has accused the Senate of forgery over call for resignation or sack of the Secretary to Government of the Federation, Mr Babachir Lawal.
The group’s National Coordinator, Mr Ogenyi Emmanuel, who made the accusation while briefing newsmen in Abuja on Monday.
According to him, the group is made up of 38 civil society organisations.
Emmanuel said all the documents which were the supposedly the evidence upon which the Senate Adhoc Committee relied on to arrive at its resolution were forged by the Senate.
He explained that the coalition after its private investigation discovered that upon resumption of office, Lawal resigned from the board of his company on Aug. 28, 2015.
The coordinator explained that the SGF wrote a letter to Ecobank requesting for a change of signatory on Oct. 26, 2015 after relinquishing his share in the company which the bank honoured.
According to him, the report of the Senate Adhoc Committee on Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the Northeast which indicted Lawal was false and should be discarded.
He said the report fell short of unbiased expectations as its content was mere blackmail targeted at the president to revenge the ongoing travail of some principal officers of the Senate.
According to him, some fraudulent senators forged board resolution of Rholavision Engineering Limited and a letter purportedly written and signed by the SGF to the Corporate Affairs Commission on a plane paper.
“The forged document with more recent date is the change of “5 to 6” which is what the senate is parading as evidence against Mr Lawal.
“It is disheartening to see our Senate whose leadership emerged through a forged Senate Standing Rule still be involved in another forgery of this magnitude.
“It is a national embarrassment that some senators could go that far in an attempt to tarnish Lawal’s image before Nigerians and international community in its effort to put off the anti-graft fire of this administration.
“We, therefore, see this as a direct attack on President Muhammadu Buhari and his ongoing war against corruption in Nigeria,’’ he said.
The coalition coordinator described the actions of the Senate with regard to its resolution on the SGF as “parliamentary rascality”, urging the Senate to stop playing politics with sensitive national issues.
He also called on the Attorney-General of the Federation to immediately launch investigation and prosecute the senators involved in the alleged forgery.
“We demand immediate apology from the Nigerian Senate to the SGF and Nigerians for its false alarm and smear campaign against his person in its indirect attack on the president within 72 hours or face mass and legal action.
“The apology should be done through advertorial in not less than five national dailies on their front pages.
“Nigerians are not fools; we know that the Senate is mostly made up of highly sophisticated treasury looters from across the country,’’ he said.