Omokri expressed the sentiment via an article today, December 22,
2015, after Information Minister, Lai Mohammed blamed ‘Jonathan’s sins’
for the petrol shortage.
Former media aide to ex-president, Goodluck Jonathan, Reno Omokri has said that his boss is not to blame for the fuel scarcity currently plaguing Nigeria.
Omokri expressed the sentiment via an article today, December 22, 2015, after Information Minister, Lai Mohammed blamed ‘Jonathan’s sins’ for the petrol shortage.
Read the former presidential aide’s article below:
Dear
Honourable Minister Lai Mohammed, Greetings and congratulations on your
recent and well deserved appointment as Nigeria's Minister of
Information. You may recall that we met on the set of 'Politics Today'
in May of 2011 soon after I was interviewed by Deji Bademosi and just
before you were interviewed.
The purpose of my
letter to you today is in response to your statement made on Monday the
21st of December, 2015 in which you accused former President Goodluck
Jonathan, whom I served as one of three spokesmen, of being responsible
for the current excruciating fuel scarcity now subsisting in Nigeria.
Your
exact words were "What I will be telling Nigerians is that what we met
on ground is such that we are paying for the sins of the last
administration.....One of the reasons for the fuel scarcity was the
inability of the last government to make adequate provision for fuel
subsidy".
My candid take on your message to
Nigerians is that it is an abdication of responsibility on your part and
does not project you and the government you represent as being
responsible. Government, as you very well know, is a continuum. One
government takes over from where the other stopped and to say that an
action in December of 2015 (six months after ex President Jonathan
handed over to the incumbent on May 29th, 2015) is the fault of the last
President, is to confer super human powers on Jonathan.
To
prove to you that it is wrong to blame the former President, I will
quote the words of the incumbent President. A month ago, President
Buhari, while speaking to the Nigerian community in the Iranian capital,
Tehran, said “I believe if you are in touch back at home, you would
have been told that already there is some improvement in power".
Those
were the words of President Muhammadu Buhari in Tehran on November
25th, 2015. You, Honourable Minister, also boasted about the improvement
in power back in August 2015, when you attributed the improvement to
the 'body language' of the 'new sheriff' in town. You may recall that
you said "I say it anywhere I go that even though we have not added one
single megawatt to power, there has been improvement.
My
colleagues in the PDP will say no; that’s not true. But I maintain that
this improvement is as a result of the kind of integrity that President
Buhari has brought to leadership." Now, you and I know that despite
what you said about the President's "body language", there is absolutely
no way that any action or inaction of President Muhammadu Buhari could
have led to an improvement in power.
All the new
power stations that have come on stream this year were either built or
completed by Jonathan. Absolutely all of them were conceived, funded,
built and commissioned by Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Presidents, the
same party that you said had destroyed Nigeria. On October 19th, 2013,
then President Jonathan completed and commissioned the 530 Megawatts
Omotosho Power station Phase 2 begun by his predecessor.
On
February 20th, 2015, he commissioned the 750 MW Olorunsogo II Power
Station in Ifo Local Government Area of Ogun State. On March 24th, 2015,
Jonathan also commissioned the Phase I 504MW (Simple Cycle Gas) Alaoji
Power Plant at Umuobasi-Ukwu, Abia State. Former President Jonathan was
also the leader who successfully privatized major chunks of our power
generation and distribution infrastructure. He also created the Nigerian
Bulk Electricity Trading PLC.
So concerned was
President Jonathan to know the state of electricity provision that I had
to do regular, sometimes weekly, polls and surveys on Twitter to get
the public's feedback on the state of power in their locales.
Yet,
despite all these, President Buhari and you, Honourable Minister, were
not shy at taking credit for the improvement in electricity in far away
Tehran and Lagos at various times this year. One wonders why the same
"integrity" you credited for automatically improving power cannot
provide fuel?
Don't you think it is a bit rich to
blame ex-President Jonathan for the current fuel subsidy especially
given the fact that leading lights of your party resisted and rejected
the ex-President’s move to do away with fuel subsidy by deregulating the
downstream sector of the petroleum sector?
Indeed
Honourable Minister, you may recall that as the National Publicity
Secretary of the then Action Congress of Nigeria, you released a
statement condemning the then government's plans to deregulate the
petroleum industry and remove fuel subsidy and also said that the
removal of fuel subsidy was "a threat to Nigeria's unity".
Sir,
you would agree with me that it is only honourable to take the bitter
with the sweet. I am reminded of my 10 year old daughter's comments to
me every time I accuse her of watching too much television. She quotes a
line from the Disney movie, 'A Bug's Life' in which Hopper says to Atta
"First rule of leadership: Everything is your fault".
If
my daughter at 10 is aware of this rule, shouldn't a minister of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, who also happens to be over 60 years of
age, and who also happens to be the official spokesperson of the current
administration know this rule?
A bad workman may
blame his tools, but it takes an irresponsible workman to blame his
predecessor! When Jonathan became President on May 6th, 2010, he met a
comatose railway network.
He did not blame his
predecessors. Rather, he went to work. Within two years, he successfully
rehabilitated a significant portion of our national railway
infrastructure and had restored intra and intercity routes for the first
time decades.
He made it possible for Nigerians
to travel from Lagos to Kano for less than $10 (₦1600). There were
services from Port Harcourt to Enugu, Makurdi to Port Harcourt and
Gombe-Kafanchan-Kaduna to mention but a few. For the first time in
decades, there was a direct rail transport from Tin Can Island Port in
Lagos all the way to Kano with stops along the way.
Jonathan
successfully built the brand new standard gauge 187 kilometer
Abuja-Kaduna railway which will make it possible to live in Kaduna and
work in Abuja.
Within Lagos, he introduced air
conditioned fast Diesel Multiple Unit trains, the first of its type in
Nigeria. I quite remember that when I wrote about these accomplishments,
members and sympathizes of your party publicly labeled me a liar.
I
remained a liar in the eyes of the Nigerian public until my recent
surprise vindication by the new Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi,
who said while on a familiarization tour of the Nigerian Railway
Corporation as follows “in fact, I think we have a problem; most people
don’t believe that the railway transport is functioning in Nigeria.
I
didn’t even know, until I started this tour, I never knew that the
railway was functioning, it was even from his (MD’s) speech that I
learnt that there are some coaches or services that go to Kano or Port
Harcourt or elsewhere. So we need to make people become more aware that
the narrow gauge is working, and that people can still use it to travel
around that country."
Now, Honourable Minister Lai
Mohammed, who do we blame for this remarkable progress in our rail
sector? Let me end this letter to you with a quote from bestselling
author, Dr. Steve Maraboli: "It’s time to care; it’s time to take
responsibility; it’s time to lead; it’s time for a change; it’s time to
be true to our greatest self; it’s time to stop blaming others."
Thank you and be assured of my continued loyalty and support to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Source: Pulse ng
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