Politics
THE Centre for Accountability and Good Governance, a civil society group, has cautioned politicians against blackmailing fellow citizens to get political appointments.
The group made the call in a statement issued by its Secretary General, Mr Olamide Badmus, on Monday in Abuja.
Badmus said the recent online media report of an alleged corruption against a former Permanent Secretary, Dr Mohammed Dikwa, was malicious and cheap blackmail.
He said the former permanent secretary was one of Nigeria’s most outstanding public servants.
According to him, all the allegations raised in the said publication against Dikwa by the online medium accusing him of conniving with a female staff of NDIC to hide and launder money in an apartment in Abuja is totally false and malicious.
Badmus said: “For the avoidance of doubt, we want to make it categorically clear that we have been interacting with Dr Dikwa for years, and we can vouch for him.
“He is a man of impeccable character and his clean and excellent track record in the Borno and the Federal Civil Service has been consistent.
“There was never a time that the name of Dr Dikwa, who retired as a permanent secretary, was mentioned in any case of corruption or official recklessness.”
“We hereby use this medium to caution those behind the malicious story to retract it with immediate effect.
“One doesn’t need to blackmail and tarnish the image of an individual simply because the individual poses a threat to his or her ambition.
“It is wrong to try people on pages of newspaper for offences they never commit simply because we do not like or hate them. This trend has to stop,” he cautioned.
Badmus said the fact that the author of the story waited till 2023 before talking about event that they alleged to have happened in 2020 showed the real intention of the writer.
“We call on Nigerians to disregard the story and see it as the handiwork of desperate politicians lobbying for appointment and using Machiavellian tactics to eliminate those who pose a threat to their ambitions,” he said. (NAN)
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Tags: Centre for Accountability and Good Governance Dr Mohammed Dikwa Mr Olamide Badmus NDIC
