A lawyer to suspended Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Ibrahim Magu, Tosin Ojaomo, on Tuesday said President Muhammadu Buhari has not sacked his client.
Ojaomo made this claim during an interview with Punch while reacting to the appointment of Abdulrasheed Bawa as the new chairman of the EFCC.
Naija News had earlier reported that President Buhari named 40-year-old Abdulrasheed Bawa as the new Chairman of the EFCC.
The President also asked the Nigerian Senate to confirm Bawa’s nomination as the nation’s anti-graft boss.
Ojaomo, however, said Magu had only been suspended by the President, he further stated that till this moment, he had neither received a letter of termination nor further instruction.
He said, “Magu has not yet been sacked by the President. He was put on suspension pending the outcome of the probe by the panel. He has not yet been sacked.”
Magu, who served as acting chairman of the EFCC from 2015 to 2020, was rejected twice by the Senate.
He was later suspended along with several others for allegedly mismanaging funds of the commission, an allegation which he denied.
The former EFCC boss was probed for over three months by a judicial panel of inquiry led by Justice Ayo Salami.
The panel made several recommendations but the report has not been made public to date.
In a related development, the chairman-designate of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Abdulrasheed Bawa, was arrested and detained by the commission in 2019 for selling at least 244 trucks worth between N20-30 million each to his proxies at N100,000 per unit.
Naija News had earlier reported that President Muhammadu on Tuesday asked the 9th Senate to confirm Bawa as the Chairman of the EFCC.