Tony Ezimakor, Abuja
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been urged to complete the ministerial restructuring he began recently by relinquishing his hold on the Petroleum Resources ministry.
Osita Okechukwu, a founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC) threw the challenge in a statement he signed at the weekend
While commending President Tinubu for the step taken to inject vigour in his cabinets and compelling all the ministers to be on their toes via the review, Okechukwu said the action remains stillborn and incomplete if the president continues his stranglehold on the petroleum ministry.
“Mr. President deserves kudos for adhering to the ageless doctrine of Key Performance Index index (KPI) evaluation, which is a major management tool that guarantees transparency and accountability.
“In the same vein, I wish to appeal to Mr President to complete the reshuffle process by relinquishing the post of God Minister of Petroleum Resources as a matter of urgent national importance. This step would go a long way to stem, if not weed out the buccaneer antics of the less than transparent Oil Mafia,” he stated.
The former Director General of Voice of Nigeria ( VON), recalled that the cabinet review, which was announced during the Federal Executive Council Meeting last Wednesday, was a signposts something positive for the future and that the president would do as the general overseer of the whole ministries.
He stated that to help bring sanity in the Petroleum sector and not only position the President effectively as General Overseer of the entire Federal Ministries; but an enablement for the Hadiza Bala Usman Coordinating Policy Unit to effectively sanitize the oil industry.
Okechukwu submitted that, “it would be strategic if His Excellency, President Ahmed Bola Tinubu, GCFR, willingly vacates the office of Minister. I am making this humble appeal on the grounds that it is practically unimaginable and absolutely impossible for the Coordinating Policy Unit headed by Hadiza Bala Usman to monitor or even take a cursory glance at the Petroleum Ministry as it would amount to supervising her principal, the President, who is the Minister.”
The Public Relations Consultant also cautioned the President not to fall into the toxic state capture trap of Minister of Petroleum, which made the operation of the oil industry opaque and made it impossible for former Presidents to even fix one out of four petroleum refineries in over two decades.
According to Okechukwu, “the failure to make any of the country’s four refineries functional made Nigerians to lose faith in democracy, just as it has generated hunger and multidimensional poverty. Nigeria has also over the years suffered great economic haemorrhage by squandering over $70 billion on importation of refined petroleum products as well as undue imbalance on the country’s foreign exchange earnings.”
While reiterating his appeal on President Tinubu to forthwith relinquish the Petroleum Resources portfolio, Okechukwu stressed that many of us APC members want him to succeed and win the 2027 presidential election via free and fair ballot not controversy.
