From Alhaji Lai Mohammed
–
The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has accused the Federal Government of deliberately sabotaging the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, headed by Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, following the controversy that
marred the presentation of the task force’s report last Friday.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party
said the decision to appoint two members of the committee, Mr. Steve Oronsaye and Mr. Bernard Otti, to
positions in the NNPC while the task force was still working on its assignment is a deliberate booby trap.
It said if the Federal Government did not have any ulterior motive, it would have waited for the task force to
complete its assignment before naming Mr. Oronsaye into the board of the NNPC and Otti as the Director of
Finance of the same body.
”Alternatively, both men should have resigned their membership of the committee the moment they were given the
plum jobs to avoid the apparent conflict of interest. The fact that they stayed on, only to disparage the report of the
task force so openly and ferociously at the end, is the clearest indication yet that they were meant to play that exact
role of spoilers,” ACN said.
The party said the temerity with which the duo sought to denigrate the report of the task force in
the presence of the President of the Federal Republic showed that they must have been acting a well-prepared script.
”All that these two men needed to have done, if indeed they did not agree with the report of the task force, was to write
a minority report and present such to the President, instead of engaging in theatrics as they did at the presentation,
right in front of the whole world.
”Unfortunately, the President’s efforts to downplay the whole disagreement and give the dissenters a soft landing did
more to accentuate the damage done to the report by the two men. The President’s statement, that becoming board
members of NNPC does not disqualify them from being members of the task force, is an indication of his innermost
thoughts on this issue,” it said.
ACN however said it was not surprised at how things turned out with the task force, having previously warned, in a
statement it issued on February 8th 2012, that naming credible people like Mr. Nuhu Ribadu to head the task force
might just be part of government’s ploy to poach credible personalities from the opposition just so it can decimate it
(opposition) and also tarnish the well-earned credibility of such personalities.
”Among our observations in that press statement, we had said: ‘There is also the possibility that booby-traps will be
deliberately set for such credible personalities to guarantee their failure in their stated assignment, after which they will
be ridiculed and dumped like an ordinary chump’.” the party said, adding: ”We hate to say our fears have been justified.”
It reiterated its earlier statement that the Federal Government is not interested in any genuine effort to clean up the corruption
and mess in the oil sector, and that is merely engaging in window dressing by setting up committees upon committees, whose
outcomes will eventually add to the growing list of reports that are now gathering dust at the presidency.
