Has the report of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force headed by Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, which was submitted to President Goodluck Jonathan two weeks ago been dumped? Well, the associated controversy trailing recent pronouncement by some government spin masters has raised moral questions. In this report, George Agba examines the twist and turn of events as the presidency battles to distance Jonathan from the growing saga.
How President Goodluck Jonathan intends to wriggle out of the political morass he has been enmeshed since the Mallam Nuhu Ribadu led Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force submitted its report alongside two other committees, is one mystery which is better left to be seen than imagined. The question remains; has the report been dumped?
The truth for now is that the report is being trailed by series of comments and not too complimentary debates, some of which have elicited suspicion and scepticism about government’s true motive about the panel and whether the report as it were, is still implementable.
Out of the three reports submitted to President Jonathan penultimate Friday. The Ribadu report seems to be the only document that conjures controversy. This may stem from insinuations that it was leaked to the foreign media and having become public, the media highlighted some of its findings and recommendations before it was submitted to Jonathan. The report is said to have indicted the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for sundry economic crimes.
In the past few days after the report was submitted to the president, the presidency has been running from pillar to post, employing every media skills to dispel attacks from the opposition camp. While the presidential media team is not doing badly in defending Jonathan, keen observers say it may still be its own undoing, following what they termed discordant tunes from the president’s camp. According to them, such uncoordinated disposition presents to Nigerians a double-speak, especially when the seeming reactions said to represent the presidency’s position appear to be in conflict with other related ones from the same source.
The thinking is that it casts a spell in the eyes of even the ordinary man to see a situation where consistently, assurances from the presidency points to the fact that the federal government was set to implement the three reports on the oil sector, including that of the Ribadu led task force, and on the contrary, another position from the same presidency questions the authenticity or otherwise of the said Ribadu report.
But all the same, Ribadu has stated it in clearer terms to the President while submitting the report that the buck stops on his table. “Mr. President, it is your government, it is your work and, whatever it is, it’s you and nobody else. This recommendation is for you to use. You thought it wise to call people from outside to come into the industry and look at it critically and give you an honest opinion”, he had stated while making his presentation. The import was that Ribadu tactically extricated himself from any controversy that may be ignited afterwards. He sure calculated very well, and of course it could be paying off.
As expected, the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), two days after the report was submitted to the President, accused the federal government of deliberately sabotaging Ribadu’s efforts, following the controversy that characterised the presentation of the task force’s report.
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, national publicity secretary of the party in a statement, alleged that the appointment of Mr Steve Oronsaye and Mr Bernard Otti, two members of the task force to positions in the NNPC while the committee was still working on its assignment, was a calculated attempt to frustrate its findings.
“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,’’ ACN said.
However, special adviser to the president on media and publicity, Dr Reuben Abati, swiftly reacted to ACN’s claims, saying they all fall into the party’s familiar pattern of availing itself of every opportunity to insult President Jonathan.? “Nothing can be farther from the truth. The statement falls into a familiar pattern by the party and its lying Lai, to seek every opportunity to insult President Goodluck Jonathan, as they write glibly about what they call ‘the President’s efforts to downplay the whole disagreement and give the dissenters a soft landing’, and the President’s ‘innermost thoughts on this issue.
Asking the ACN to “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”,? Abati noted that 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”, adding that while 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”.
Unfortunately, just as Nigerians were still digesting Abati’s defence of the president’s true position on the Ribadu’s report, Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, opened another controversial chapter on the issue when he openly faulted the report. At a press conference in Abuja with political correspondents, Okupe said the revenue task force report was incomplete and incapable of indicting anyone.
Okupe said the committee had failed to carry out the very critical part of the assignment given to it and instead passed on the duty of reconciliation and verification of the data contained in the report to the government. Citing a paragraph in the report, Okupe said the paragraph “is an obvious DISCLAIMER (emphasis his) issued by the committee on the entire report, makes it impossible under our laws to indict or punish anyone except, and until, the Federal Government fully verifies and reconciles the facts as recommended by the committee in its submission to the government.”
Okupe blamed Ribadu for the politicisation of the report. He alleged that there was a major public disinformation campaign which, he said, was calculated to overheat the polity and incite Nigerians against the president because of the report.
Curiously, Okupe’s damning verdict was coming on a day and simultaneously at the time the President held meeting with Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, and other stakeholders in the sector to consider technical aspects of the reports presented to it from the oil sector, including the Ribadu report. Presidential spokesman, Dr Abati said the meeting hinged on the report of the task force on refineries which made recommendations on ways to boost domestic refining.
Faulting the impression given by some Nigerians that government sets up committees and then refuse to implement the recommendations of such committees, Abati noted that President Goodluck Jonathan has already commenced the implementation of the recommendations of the committees he set up.
He said, “the whole point of this is to make it clear that action is already being taken on the reports of the committees. The first meeting that was held today is on this issue of refineries. What I have given you is the outline. Another meeting will be fixed where further presentations would be made on the technical details on how these objectives would be achieved.
“I think this clarification is important because since the presentation of these reports to Mr President, there has been an excessive focus on the politicisation of the petroleum revenue task force reports whereas on that day, there were discussions relating to the refineries, there were discussions relating to the issues of governance system in the petroleum sector. It is important to clarify that actually, action is already being taken and for the benefit of those who think when committees submit reports, government sleeps on those reports, you can see clearly that this is not the case”.
But since Okupe held his press conference last Friday, there has been a new twist to the issue, with critics and the opposition claiming they have been vindicated on the matter.
?A bewildered Abati has come out strongly to defend the president. In an article published in most of the national newspapers in the country, the presidential spokesman wrote: “It is so unfortunate that there has been so much ignorant carping and malicious tittle-tattling about the report of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force chaired by Malam Nuhu Ribadu, both failings arising from a deliberate attempt to individualize what was actually “group work, a mischievous attempt to politicize one report out of three, and to smuggle into an emergent grand web of conspiracy, elements of blackmail, mischief and outright opportunism.
“I should like to dispel the putrefacious stench of the issues that seems to have overtaken the subject by returning all of us to certain basics that have not changed since President Jonathan approved the setting up of committees to inquire into different aspects of the petroleum sector and particularly, since the reports were presented and accepted. The facts are as follows:
“The committees in question and the probe into the Petroleum sector were initiated by President Goodluck Jonathan to ensure transparency and accountability in the extractive industry; the goal was to transform the sector and raise levels of integrity accordingly. Every step that has been taken by this administration in this regard has been in fulfillment of this well-stated principle. This includes the decision to completely deregulate the downstream sector, which has now resulted in the exposure of oily deals in that sector with consequences for the indicted persons.
?“On the specific issue of the Petroleum Revenue Task Force report, mischief-makers should go back to the statements made by President Jonathan, and subsequently by the Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, on the occasion of the presentation of the report. The president’s position that the work of the Ribadu Committee, and of the two other committees that presented their reports on that occasion, the Idika Kalu committee on Refineries and the Dotun Sulaiman Committee on Governance is useful and enlightening has not changed. Alison-Madueke has further echoed that position more than twice”.
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