Nov. 4 (PREMIUM TIMES) — The Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has accused the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government of deliberately sabotaging  the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, headed by Mr. Nuhu Ribadu, following the controversy that  marred the presentation of the task force’s report last Friday.

In a statement issued in Lagos on Sunday by its National Publicity Secretary, Lai Mohammed, the party said the decision to appoint two members of the committee, Steve Oronsaye and Bernard Otti, to positions in the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation  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 Mr. Oronsaye into the board of the NNPC and Mr. Otti as director of finance of the same body.

”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 ACN said.

The ACN accuses FG of deliberately sabotaging Ribadu Task Force party said the temerity with which the duo sought to denigrate the report of the task force in  the presence of the President of the Federal Republic showed that they must have been acting a well-prepared script.

”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,” it said.

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, that naming credible people like Mr. Nuhu 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.

”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’.” the party said, adding: ”We hate to say our fears have been justified.”

It 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.