CSOs Caution Reps Against Muzzling FCC Chair Dialogue

Some civil society organisations (CSOs), rights activists and media executives have asked the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee, investigating job racketeering and gross mismanagement of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) not to muzzle the chairman of the Federal Character Commission (FCC), Dr Muyeebat Dankaka.

The chairman of the ad-committee, Hon Yusuf Gagdi, had on Monday told chairman, secretary and commissioners of FCC not to address journalists about the ongoing probe.

Gagdi said, “Federal Character we have resolved …wait, please sit down, no commissioner should address the press. Don’t preempt our investigation.

“Federal Character please allow us to do justice, including the chairman, secretary, nobody from federal character should address the press on the pending investigation.”

But the coordinating activist of the Coalition of Concerned Civil Society Activists, Comrade Ishaya Isa Saka and spokesperson, Comrade Bamidele Akanbi, in a statement yesterday disagreed with the panel.

They said the organisations raised serious objections and alarm on what they referred to as “the shoddy treatment meted out to the Executive Chairperson of the Federal Character Commission (FCC), Dr Dankaka.”

The groups said the issue now looks like a witch-hunt, “because her organisation has been hand-picked with different stories emanating from the Commission as a result of a gang-up of some Federal Commissioners and disgruntled former staff Haruna Kolo.

“We are compelled to react due to the fact that the FCC has been on media trial for the past three weeks with dirty linen from the Commission dished and served to the Nigerian public by the Ad-hoc Committee and arm-twisting the Management of FCC, not to address the press to rebuff and do a rejoinder of all the unhealthy, bias statements and mischievous fallacies dished to the public.

“We condemn, in the strongest terms possible, this lackluster attitude of the House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee led by Hon. Yusuf Gagdi,” adding, “He who asks for equity must come with clean hands. You cannot lampoon and bastardize the hard-earned image of the chairperson of FCC and, at the same time, not allow her and her loyal and patriotic commissioners at FCC to respond.

“The Ad-hoc Committee should have known better, in the first instance, that it is investigating the issues and conduct itself in a professional manner, instead of the media trial the Commission has gone through, maligning the image and reputation of the chairperson to high heavens all in a bid to give a dog a bad name in order to hang it,” the CSOs insisted.