Opposition MP Biram Dah Abeid has called for Prime Minister Mokhtar Ould Diay to resign or be dismissed over the case involving the Mauritanian Electricity Company, SOMELEC. He argued that removing the executive officials named in the inquiry report was insufficient unless accountability also extended to the highest levels of political leadership.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Ould Abeid accused the prime minister of seeking to protect the company he blamed for the fire. He said the company was owned by cousins of President Mohamed Ould Cheikh El Ghazouani.
He also criticised statements that dated the purchase of the equipment concerned to 2015. In his account of the inquiry's findings, the equipment was bought under the Nouakchott modernisation programme and installed only weeks before the fire.
Ould Abeid linked the case to what he described as earlier instances in which senior officials' names were excluded from the parliamentary inquiry into former president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz's decade in power. He argued that some figures escaped accountability despite issues raised about them in Court of Auditors reports and inspections by the State General Inspectorate.
The MP said all responsibilities must be established and appropriate consequences imposed before the SOMELEC case could be closed. He warned that punishing executive officials alone would reduce the fight against corruption and mismanagement to a slogan.
He called for political officials, including the prime minister, to be held accountable so that no party would be exempt from scrutiny.
