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.”
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