ACN to Presidency: Look inwards for those insulting Jonathan

The Action Congress of Nigeria has said Steve Oronsaye and Bernard Otti were the ones who insulted President Goodluck Jonathan by the way they turned the presentation of the report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force into a theatre of the absurd on Friday.
In a statement issued in Lagos on Monday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the ACN said the Presidency also condoned the insult by the way it handled the outburst of Orosanye and Otti, treating them with kid gloves when they should have been censured for their audacity and discourteous behaviour at the public presentation.
The statement by Mohammed said: “Oronsaye’s incredibly audacious statement, that ‘the President has asked us to submit the report….and so what?’ should have elicited the reaction which the Presidency issued to ACN’s statement, if indeed the Presidency is concerned about insults.”
The ACN said the Presidency is trying to blackmail the opposition by now accusing it of insulting the President, for merely saying the obvious, that the only reason Oronsaye and Otti could have acted in such a brazen manner with the President seated right there is if they were indeed programmed to perform the role of spoilers by discrediting the report.
The statement added: “President Jonathan is a democratically-elected President, not an oracle who cannot and must not be criticised. Therefore, we at the ACN will continue to offer a constructive criticism of his administration, true to our role of providing responsible opposition.
“We stand by our statement and will not be cowed by this old, cheap trick of labelling constructive criticism as an insult.”
The ACN challenged the Presidency to deny the facts contained in the party’s earlier statement on the issue, adding: “Let’s restate the facts, for the avoidance of doubt: One, Oronsaye and Otti were already serving on the task force before they were given the plum NNPC jobs. Two, the Federal Government could have
waited for them to complete their assignment before giving them suspicious appointments, if only to avoid possible conflict of interest or any perception of such. Three, the men could have resigned their membership of the task force after they got themselves the NNPC jobs. And four, they could have written a minority report when they disagreed with the conclusion of the task force, instead of choosing the presentation venue to discredit the report.
“These are the facts that the presidency, through the chameleonic presidential spokesman Reuben Abati, should have addressed, instead of resorting to name calling. In any case, we are not surprised at Abati’s metamorphosis. With his snout now deeply inserted in the nectar of office, criticisms have turned to insults in his eyes.”
The ACN said this is the same Abati who, in his newspaper column before fortune smiled on him, regularly tackled sitting presidents with his unsparing articles.
It said: “In one of such, entitled ‘The President’s missing ears’, he wrote of then President Umaru Yar’Adua: ‘Men Without Ears is the title of a 1984 novel by Nigerian writer, Ifeoma Okoye. With due respect, President Umaru Yar’Adua is beginning to behave like a man without ears. Being without ears refers to a certain obduracy, a peculiar inability to appreciate the truth. I see the same problem in the Yar’Adua presidency, seven months down the line.”
Abati went further: “The President either needs the services of an ear doctor (I am sorry sir) or he needs to listen a bit more attentively. There are issues in this country which need to be addressed urgently, which the government is treating with kid gloves.”
The ACN said since Abati apparently did not believe that the article under reference contained any insult against then President Yar’Adua, it is disingenuous of him to keep haranguing critics of his boss for insulting him.