MAGU: Buhari, panel scandalized, forced to allow Magu to open defence—on one condition still

Suspended chairman of the EFCC Ibrahim Magu has got a nod to open his defence before the Justice Ayo Salami panel probing him inside Aso Rock.

The panel once rejected his application for defence, but may have caved in following worries and speculations in the media—about  the secrecy that envelops the Magu probe in the last two weeks.

The PDP said it was all a ruse to sweep the corruption allegations under the carpet, and then make the Senate confirm the acting chairman, who has been in that capacity for five years.

Many also believe the chief petitioner and Magu’s supervisor AGF Abubakar Malami is complicit in the allegations, considering the slivers of counter-allegations Magu’s just revealed.

According to the embattled chairman, Malami supervised release of some of the assets when the court cases were still going on, and that the office of President Muhammadu Buhari,  ministries, departments, and agencies are the beneficiaries of the assets the commission recovered, for which the EFCC boss is accused of re-looting by the Presidential Committee on Audit of Recovered Assets PCARA.

Less than 48hours after Magu’s went with this to the media—the only place he claimed he got the panel’s allegations against him, and the only place he could defend himself– the panel decided to allow him defend himself.

The committee eventually gave him a copy of the allegations on Thursday—after 10 days of detaining him, and releasing him into suspension.

But the panel likes him to do all his defence in the dark, still. And that’s the only condition.

According to reports, Justice Salami made Magu’s counsel, Barrister Wahab Shittu, commit to keeping the PCARA’s report as air-tight as possible.

“We state for the records that we are not in a position to query the honourable panel and certainly will never set out doing so,” Shittu said, in part, in a letter to the panel.