Barely 24 fours after the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Babachir David Lawal, announced that because he had dragged the Senate to court and as such won’t honour its invitation to any meeting, he has written a second letter citing busy official schedule as the reason for his absence from the meeting.

The Senate Committee on Mounting Humanitarian Crisis in the North East, headed by Senator Shehu Sani had invited Babachir to appear before it to provide explanations on the alleged mismanagement of funds voted for the Presidential Initiative on North East (PINE). The Senate invited him based on an interim report submitted by Sani’s committee which had indicted Babachir and asked that he should resign immediately. A position President Muhammadu Buhari opposed.

In his first response to the fresh invitation, Babachir informed the Senate that he had gone to court to question the Senate power in inviting him, he won’t honour the invitation.

“I wish to kindly request that you draw the attention of the other members of the committee that I will not be able to appear before the committee primarily because I have been to court to challenge the invitation among others,” he wrote in the letter.

But in a twist of event, the SGF quickly brought a second letter within 24 hours after the first letter and declared that his main reason for not honouring the invitation was due to the “pressing engagement of Government which clashed with the date of the hearing.”

•Sourced from The Guardian.