…To meet with IDPs, villagers, others over allegations
A Civil Society Organisation under the aegis of Citizens Action To Take Back Nigeria (CATBAN), has embarked on a facts finding mission to the North-east part of the country to unravel the truth behind allegations of abuse of the Public Procurement Acts in contract awarded by the Presidential Initiative on North East (PINE) against the Secretary to the Government of the Federation Engr. Lawal Babachir.
CATBAN believe that the journey to unravel the circumstances surrounding the allegation against the SGF become necessary so as not to proceed in error.
A statement signed in Abuja yesterday by the National Coordinator of group Ibrahim Garba Wala, said that since it last press statement demanding the resignation and prosecution of Engr. Lawal, several documents had been made available for them including 138 petitions against the adhoc committee’s interim report.
“We were also availed with detailed submissions with verifiable evidence from Rholavision Engineering Limited & Josmon Technologies (the two companies in the eye of the storm) on everything related to constitution of the directorship of the companies & details of the contract.
“We reached out to the Corporate Affairs Commission for some clarification, to which we were told the file for Rholavision Engineering had vanished.
“In view of the above, we believe that there is more to this issue than meets the eye. As a responsible civil society organisation, it is our duty to stand on the side of justice and fairplay for the sake of posterity. It will be foolhardy of us to ignore these calls without doing our own thorough investigations into the accusations and indictments released by the Senate.
“Subsequently, we have taken it upon ourselves to undertake a physical tour of the project in question in Yobe State. It is our strong belief that unless we do that, we may never really know the full story behind these issues.
“We will engage the communities and do a thorough fact finding with pictures & videos to enable Nigerians know what really happened and is happening. From there, we will investigate all parties from every side of the argument. At the end of this exercise, we will make our findings known to the world via a press conference, from where we will know the next step to take to ensure that whoever is culpable is not spared.”
The group, therefore, called on Nigerians who still have documents or reports regarding these incidents, “to please use this opportunity to submit them to us so that we can be availed of every fact with which to work.
“Make no mistakes about it, if at the end of this exercise our stand remains as it is, we will not spare the SGF. If however we find out that the allegations are all false and a means to an end, we will not spare any member of that adhoc committee.”
