Our attention has been drawn to the face-saving “resignation letter” hurriedly tendered by Lt Col Tony Nyiam (rtd) after his sack as member of the Presidential Advisory Committee on National Dialogue, following his unruly outburst at the committee’s sitting in Benin City on Monday, October 28, 2013.
While we welcome Nyiam’s sack as good riddance to bad rubbish, we note that his purported “resignation letter” is filled with half-truths and outright lies. We are however not surprised by this, as it is consistent with his inconsistent character.
In his confusion, Nyiam in paragraph seven of the “resignation letter” said Governor Adams Oshiomhole spoke for forty minutes but he contradicted himself in paragraph 10, when he said the Governor spoke for an hour. We make bold to say that Governor Oshiomhole spoke for less than 25 minutes during the courtesy visit of the Committee to him in his office and he spoke for less than seven minutes at the sitting at Imaguero College Hall. We have video evidence of the whole proceedings to buttress this fact and we challenge Nyiam to bring his own recording of it. Afterall, Cameramen and reporters attached to the Committee recorded the whole event.
At any rate, when has it become a crime for anyone to speak for a particular length of time. We pity Nyiam because he brought this up for want of things to say.
Yes, Governor Oshiomhole said he is a Kaduna-made man and sees himself first as a Nigerian because of his pan-Nigeria background rather than as an Afemai man from Edo State. He mentioned this to disabuse the minds of people like Nyiam from the narrow angle of ethnicity rather than seeing themselves first as Nigerians; we now know that it rankles Nyiam’s myopic view for anyone to see himself first as a Nigerian than as a tribal champion. Comrade Oshiomhole has no apology to tender for his pan-Nigeria view.
As a mark of respect for the person and office of the President, the Edo State Executive Council meeting which holds every Monday was first halted midway to accommodate the courtesy visit of the Presidential Advisory Committee and it was eventually adjourned for the Governor to attend the Committee’s sitting to which he had been officially invited by the Dialogue Committee. That is the highest honour any state government can accord the committee.
It was also in honour of the President that the Governor stuck to the agenda of the Committee which indicated that he was expected to make his presentation, even as he had his personal reservations.
What Nyiam does not realize is that if Governor Oshiomhole had contempt for the office and person of the President, he would rather have stayed away from the Conference and would not have given the committee its full respect by meeting all their needs as stated in their earlier letter.
Again, we wonder what Nyiam means by ‘talking down’. To him, expressing an opinion contrary to his preconceived position means ‘talking down on the people’. He is intolerant to other peoples’ views which he finds ‘derogatory’.
We are glad that Tony Nyiam has been sacked from the Committee, because it is now clear that his membership of the Committee might have been made in error given his history as a confused man, a divisionist, who in uniform planned a coup d’etat against the country and wanted parts of the country forcefully excised.
We of the belief that Nyiam, who has no faith in the country and has such deep-seated hatred for her people should, ab initio, not have been assigned such an important duty as the current one which is meant to further cement the people of Nigeria.
In spite of Nyiam’s resignation, the Comrade Governor still believes that the real challenge is getting Nigeria back to production. The real challenge is creating an industrial base to provide employment opportunity for our teeming youths.
Prince Kassim Afegbua,
Special Adviser Media and Public Affairs
