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NNPC, Oando and Atiku Abubakar’s attacks
By Temitope Ajayi
By his advanced age and eminent status as a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is by no means qualified to be an elder statesman. Statesmen are highly venerated and revered people to whom we go for advice, guidance and direction.
But sometimes, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar behaves as if he should be removed from that exclusive club. Or how else can one interpret some of his utterances and statements? Or is the former vice president merely playing politics? But politics should have its season and time and should sometimes give way for nation-building and patriotism. Statesmen are not given to flippancy. Neither are they whimsical. They are measured in words and deeds, a quality that Alhaji Atiku has not demonstrated in public discourse since losing the last presidential election as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Alhaji Atiku, obviously still stung by his electoral loss, can not see that a person of his profile must make interventions decorously and decently.
As a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku self-denigrates when he makes interventions that eschew basic decency and without weighing how such unguarded outpourings portray the country and the implications for businesses and state institutions.
A man who still nurses the ambition to be president despite being close to the Octogenarian Club should be mindful not to destroy the institutions of state upon which the government functions.
For reasons borne out of desperation and frustration arising from an unrealised presidential ambition, Alhaji Atiku and his attack dogs have been unrelenting in their assault on NNPC and members of President Bola Tinubu's family without any justifiable reason. It is more telling that the attacks have been based on outright lies, half-truths, and deliberate distortion of facts to hoodwink the public.
In his recent tirades, the former Vice President falsely accused President Tinubu, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and Oando Plc, where the President’s relative, Mr Wale Tinubu, holds sway as the Chief Executive, of unwholesome practice in a purely commercial transaction involving a downstream company where Oando had interests and the retail arm of NNPC.
For Alhaji Atiku, facts are not sacred if his politics is served. The damage he has inflicted on the economy and the public image of the entities involved in this matter means nothing to a man who wants to pollute the environment enough to create a credibility crisis.
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While Alhaji Atiku, on whose authority false claims are regularly made via reckless press statements, is vicariously liable, it is pathetic that the defeated PDP presidential candidate parades media aides such as Paul Ibe and Phrank Shaibu, who also lack introspection. The two pitiable men, who must be seen working to justify their pay, have scant regard for the truth.
Ibe and Shaibu have a superficial knowledge of the issues they raised in many of their arid press releases. The two men are either too lazy to do the necessary research on the subject matter or at least seek the opinions of experts for proper education on the transaction dynamics involved in the OVH/NNPC deal and that of OANDO/AGIP divestment.
In one of his press statements, Alhaji Atiku misinformed the public when he accused President Tinubu of mortgaging the country to his family members and associates. In his rage, he said NNPC puts its retail arm under the control of OVH, a company he alleged that Oando, led by Wale Tinubu, owns a 49% stake in. One would expect that a former Vice President of Nigeria should speak to facts and not innuendos. This is more so for a man who expects the public to take him seriously. To start with, Wale Tinubu and Oando do not own a 49% stake in OVH after Oando sold its downstream business.
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