President Bola Tinubu, has been called upon, not to succumb to blackmails in form of protests and calls for sack of the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Bayo Ojulari, as they are part of the grand plot by opposition elements who are working with a few disgruntled top management staff of the company to de-market and destabilize the administration.
The call was made by Nigeria First Initiative (NFI), a non-governmental organization, at a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday. The organization was reacting to a protest staged in front of NNPC Towers by a group that called itself Niger Delta Youths.
The group had called for the resignation of Bashir Ojulari over what it claimed as corruption and mismanagement, and demanded that a person from Niger Delta region be appointed to head the national oil company.
Reacting to the protest, NFI dismissed it as laughable, saying first of all that the few protesters were not from Niger Delta but jobless youths hired from Abuja suburbs who were not even bold enough to show their faces on camera.
The Executive Secretary of NFI, Nelson Okpanachi Idoko, said Nigeria is a federation and that no part of the country has the right to force the President to appoint any person to a particular leadership position. It said that a southerner from Niger Delta is currently the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, which has never happened before.
NFG said claiming that the protesters were from Niger Delta was deliberately designed to provoke ethic and regional sentiments and attempt to give a dog a bad name in order to hang, since according to the organisation, the good people of Niger Delta are well informed enough to know that such mundane demand does hold water.
According to NFI, those fighting against Tinubu, have seen that the President is recording landmark achievements in several areas including economy, massive drop in the price of food and other essential commodities including petrol and other petroleum products; which made them resort to attacking his committed appointees through media insertions and protests.
NFI said it was curious that protest was organized against NNPCL just a day after the Company reported that it was close to reaching 100 percent of its OPEC quota allocation which has not happened for decades, saying the protest and call for resignation of Ojulari was therefore planned to muffle the loud ovation the achievement has attracted which is another clear evidence that those behind it are enemies of Nigeria who hate to hear good reports about the country.
The organization said it has obtained a document that contained the list of strategic federal government agencies that the sponsors have planned to attack within the next six months, all aimed at mudsling Tinubu’s administration and putting it in bad light before the country and the global community.
“It is also curious that the protest was staged while President Tinubu is in Brazil where he is wooing investors to come to Nigeria. Even the President’s statement that Nigeria is no longer a corrupt country and therefore a fertile land for business and tourism, was criticized by these opposition elements who do not wish the country well. That was part of the reasons they gathered these vulnerable youths together to protest against NNPCL, which is the nation’s number one investment product. Their underbelly motive is to counter the President by making nonsense of what he told his international audience and global investors that were excited by Tinubu’s legendary speech.
“We therefore call on the President to take decisive action against the sponsors of the orchestrated antagonism against his well- thought-out plans and ongoing reforms that are yielding positive results. We have both the names of the sponsors of the protests and media attacks on Tinubu and his committed and loyal aides and would turn the names to the appropriate agencies for investigation and prosecution,” FGI said.
It also called on the President to take action to protect his administration by fishing out enemies within who are feeding from the government and at the same time, helping opposition to bring down the system.
