The Action Congress of Nigeria and the Presidency have disagreed over the drama that occurred on Friday during the submission ceremony of the report of the Mallam Nuhu Ribadu-led committee that probed the oil industry between 2001 and 2011.
At the submission of the committee’s report to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan at the State House, Abuja on Friday, two members of the committee, Steve Orosanye and Bernard Otti, disagreed with the content of the report.
They said they were not part of the final drafting of the report.
Owing to the position taken by Steve Orosanye and Bernard Otti at the submission of the report, the ACN on Sunday accused the Federal Government of deliberately sabotaging the work of the committee but the Presidency, also on Sunday, said the party was only finding fault where there was none.
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, Steve Oronsaye and 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 Oronsaye into the board of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and Otti as the Director of Finance of the same body.
The statement added: “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.”
The party said the temerity with which the duo sought to denigrate the report of the task force in the presence of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan showed that they must have been acting a well-prepared script.
Mohammed said: ”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.”
The 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 8, 2012, that naming credible people like 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.
The ACN added: “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.'”
Mohammed said further: “We hate to say our fears have been justified.”
The party 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.
But the Presidency responded through presidential spokesman, Dr. Reuben Abati, describing ACN’s position as following the usual pattern of using every opportunity to insult President Jonathan.
Abati said in the statement: “The drama that has been generated around the Petroleum Revenue Task Force Report, one of three reports that were submitted to President Jonathan on Friday, Nov 2, says a lot about the attempt by others to politicize everything possible and seek cheap advantages where they need not do so. For the avoidance of doubt, and for the benefit of the naysayers, the committees were set up as fact-finding and advisory bodies, to generate ideas and recommendations about how best to strengthen the oil and gas sector and to further pursue the objectives of institutional integrity, transparency and accountability. President Jonathan remains committed to the war against corruption and every step his administration has taken has been in this direction, and that has not changed.
“The Presidency deplores the attempt by both the ACN to accuse it of having had a hand in the open dissension among members of the Ribadu Committee. The disagreements during the presentation were as surprising as they were sudden. President Jonathan should be commended for his mature handling of the situation, and not made the target of silly insinuations.
“The ACN claims that Steve Oronsaye and Bernard Otti’s membership of the NNPC while serving on the Ribadu committee compromises their position. It is important to note that this committee and other committees had government officials, and ex-staff as members. They were not set up as quasi-judicial bodies but as committees of wise and knowledgeable men and women who would offer useful advice and in getting such useful advice there is nothing wrong in encouraging the participation of a broad category of persons including insiders and outsiders.
“If Lai Mohammed had done his home work, he would have discovered that there were serving government officials on the Petroleum Industry Bill Task Force, chaired by Senator Udo Udoma, and which submitted its report in June, its technical committee was chaired by Engr Osten Olorunsola of the Directorate of Petroleum Resources (DPR). Similarly, the Refineries Task Force headed by Dr Kalu Idika Kalu had all the Managing Directors of the Refineries as members. And in fact, the membership of the Ribadu Committee included representatives of the FIRS, Federal Ministry of Finance, Attorney General of the Federation/Minister of Justice, DPR, NNPC, and Accountant General of the Federation.
“The ACN should desist from looking for faults where none exists, in the expectation that if they tell the same lies long enough, more gullible persons will be persuaded to trust them.”
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