Lt Gen Nazir Ahmed appointed NAB chairman

ISLAMABAD: The federal government has appointed Lt-Gen (retd) Nazir Ahmed as National Accountability Bureau chairman following a consensus reached between Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Raja Riaz after a consultation process.

The post of NAB chairman fell vacant on February 15 after the acceptance of resignation tendered by Aftab Sultan, a notification issued for the NAB chairman’s appointment said.

According to an official communique, consultation between the leader of the House and the leader of the opposition has been made and there was a consensus on the name of Lt-Gen (retd) Nazir Ahmad for his appointment as NAB chairman.

According to sources, the federal cabinet had approved the appointment of Ahmed as NAB chairman through the circulation of a summary.

The appointment of a new chairman would be for three years. Since the establishment of NAB in November 1999, Ahmed will be the 10th chairman of the Bureau.

Ahmed’s name was proposed by Raja Riaz. The prime minister proposed the names of Justice (retd) Dost Muhammad and Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqir.

The decision came in consultations between Shahbaz and Riaz in Lahore on Saturday. Riaz confirmed to The News that he suggested the name of Ahmad and after thorough deliberations, his proposed name was decided for the slot.

Earlier, Aftab Sultan was appointed as NAB chairman in July 2022, but he could only work in his position for seven months and resigned, saying that he could not work under pressure. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Senior Vice-President Fawad Chaudhry, meanwhile, termed the process of appointing the NAB chairman controversial.

“The process of appointing the NAB chairman is controversial, as the court has suspended the resignation notification of PTI members,” he said.

The former information minister pointed out that the PTI had nominated Shah Mehmood Qureshi as the leader of the opposition.

“Against this backdrop, the process of consultation between the government and opposition on the appointment of the new NAB chairman was not done legally,” Fawad claimed.

Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Farhatullah Babar, meanwhile, questioned the appointment of Lt Gen (retd) Nazir Ahmed as NAB chairman, saying that the appointment of an ex-army officer to a civilian post was not welcome.

In a series of tweets from his personal Twitter following the appointment of Ahmed, the former senator said it was a fallacy to assume that generals or judges were panaceas for all ills. “As part of the society, they share its traits, no less and no more than others,” he tweeted.

Babar said that he was not sure whether the prime minister had appointed Ahmed as per procedure, or it was made by those who had dictated such decisions in the past.

“Unfortunate if made by the prime minister and catastrophic if dictated by those known for employing NAB as a coercive tool for poll engineering,” he wrote.