Senate Tells Buhari To Fire SGF Over IDPs Funds

By Dipo Olowookere

President Muhammadu Buhari has been asked to remove Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Babachir Lawal.

The sack of Mr Lawal was requested for by members of the Senate at the plenary on Wednesday, over his alleged involvement in the misappropriation of funds meant for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the north east of Nigeria.

A report submitted by an adhoc committee led by Senator Shehu Sani alleged that the SFG used his influence to get contract for his company, Global Vision Ltd, through the Presidential Initiative for the North East (PINE).

It was further alleged that Global Vision Ltd was among the firms indicted to have benefited from inflated and phantom contracts awarded by PINE, including using N200 million to clear ‘invasive plant species’ (grass) in Yobe State.

According to the committee’s report, Mr Lawal was still the director of Global Vision Ltd as at March 2016, when the contract was awarded and he only resigned in September 2016, though still a signatory to the company’s account.

The Senate noted that Mr Lawal, while being a public official as Nigeria’s SFG, should not have remained a director of Global Vision Ltd as stipulated in the code of conduct for public officials as enshrined in the 1999 Constitution.

It therefore said due to this, the SFG has breached the law and should be sacked by the President and prosecuted to show the seriousness of the government’s anti-corruption campaign.

Aisha Buhari Commissions Borehole For Mpape Community

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari, has commissioned water project (borehole) for people of Sympaya community of Mpape to ease them from contaminated water from a nearby river.

Mrs Buhari, who donated the borehole recently in Abuja through her NGO the ‘Future Assured’ programme, expressed hope that the water problem bedevilling the community would be alleviated.

Mrs Buhari, through her representative, the former deputy governor of Plateau State, Mrs Pauline Tallen, expressed hope that the borehole would provide portable drinking water to the community, while urging the people of the community to make judicious use of the borehole.

According to her, the borehole would prevent the community from drinking contaminated water which causes typhoid fever and other diseases.

Earlier, the Chief of Sympaya village, Elder Amadu Dio, who spoke in Hausa language, expressed his gratitude to the wife of the President for identifying with his community.

Dio said that the village had for a long time suffered from typhoid fever and other diseases as a result of lack of portable drinking water.

“For a long time, we have difficulties getting clean water in this community, sometime we get confrontation with Fulani herdsmen because their cows also drank from same source” he said.

He said that their only source of water was the nearby river which was about two kilometers to the community.

He said that, sometime his subjects make confrontation with herdsmen because the herdsmen used to move their cows to the river and contaminate the water.

The traditional ruler prayed to Almighty God to guide and protect the wife of the President for the kind gesture done to his community.