Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Deal with Oronsaye, Otti’s insults – ACN


Action Congress of Nigeria has said Steve Oronsaye and Bernard Otti 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 on Monday by its National Publicity Secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, the party said the Presidency also condoned the insult by the way it handled the two men’s outburst
The statement 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 it is concerned about insults.”
The ACN said the Presidency was trying to blackmail the opposition by 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”.
It 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 party said, “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 punch

No comments: