Ordinarily would not have responded to Tom Ikimi's lengthy chronicle of
falsehoods, cheap blackmail and abuse. My only reason for this response
is that I know Tom Ikimi's style. He subscribes to the view that no
matter how unbelievable a lie may sound if you brazenly assert it and
repeat it often enough you may persuade many that it is in fact true. I
have seen Ikimi perpetrate this deviousness in his years in public
life.
1. Regarding Ikimi's bid for the Chairmanship of the Party. It was
clear to practically everyone who had the interest of the party at heart
that we simply could not have a man of Tom Ikimi's antecedents as Chair
of the party. As chairman of the NRC, one of the only two political
parties in the country under the military transition programme, Tom
Ikimi not only connived with the then military regime to annul the
elections, terminate the democratic process and sell off his party. He
became Abacha's foreign minister, convincing the world that heinous
state murders like the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa were just acts! If Ikimi
were the Chair of APC the party would have to sleep with both eyes open
lest its chairman sell off the party before day break .No matter what
anyone may say about me it is unlikely that I can be accused of
supporting incompetent or morally light-weight individuals for important
political positions. My philosophy is to put the best forward, men and
women of competence and integrity, who can stand up to us politicians to
challenge us and say no when necessary. Such people are not noisy or
able to gain attention by being loud, I believe my role is to do all I
can to project them. Who in their right mind would compare the highly
principled Chief Bisi Akande, or Chief Oyegun with a Tom Ikimi? Either
of these two men are known for their no-nonsense styles, not once in
their careers would you hear that they betrayed a cause or were
anybody's stooge.
READ MORE AFTER THE CUT.................................................
2. Ikimi also concocts a story of a meeting he claims I had with
Deziani on the Oando/ ConocoPhillips transaction on the eve of the APC
Convention.
Only a Tom Ikimi can come up with the absurd falsehood that on the eve of the APC Convention when I was in crucial meetings practically round the clock I was meeting with the Minister for Petroleum! What exactly would have been the point of such a meeting especially on the eve of the Convention? Was it to prevent Tom Ikimi from emerging as Chairman of the APC? To what end? Of what value would it be to anyone except Ikimi himself? Besides if this was so why he is back to the same party that purportedly planned his down fall?
What is the Oando/ConocoPhillips transaction anyway? For those who do
not know this is a private sale of the assets of ConocoPhillips to
Oando. It was not patronage of any kind from the Federal government.
The Federal government's involvement was merely to formally consent to
the sale. I was not involved and I have never been involved in any of
Oando's transactions.
Typically he plays on the fact that Wale Tinubu of Oando is my
nephew. Oando has been thoroughly investigated by South African and
British authorities in the past 5 years as part of the process of
listing the company on the stock exchanges of those countries. Those
rigorous and comprehensive investigations conducted by the governments
and risk control investigators are to discover the actual ownership of
shares in the company. Politically exposed persons like myself are prime
targets for those investigations. All these investigations have shown
that I have no investments in Oando. My public position on the entire
transaction is that if an indigenous Nigerian oil and gas entity run by
young serious minded Nigerians raise money transparently in the
international capital markets to purchase private assets of a
multi-national the Federal government ought to give its consent. That it
took so long is shameful. The Conoco/Phillips transaction was a $1.7
billion dollars investment in Nigeria that would create more
jobs,witness the establishment of allied industries and make the
Nigerian Economy more attractive. I would have been extremely proud to
have made such a transaction possible.
3. Regarding the nonsense about selling out on Ribadu. I think common sense should dictate that if ever such a deal were reached we would have had to inform our members in all the States. How could that have been done secretly? How do you tell hundreds of thousands of people not to vote for your own party without it becoming public knowledge?
At the formation of the APC, a crucial debate ensued about what to do about persons like Ikimi who had done awful things in the past, but who were now minded to align with the progressive tendency in Nigerian politics. Should we forever blacklist them? This would have been the easiest route, but it would have kept rancor alive. It would have made us slaves to the bleakest chapters of our past. Instead we opted to extend the hand of brotherhood, reconcile and put the past behind us. This would enable a broader political consensus, while also giving the likes of Ikimi an opportunity to atone for their grievous wrongs against the people and be rehabilitated.
We recognized that many leading Nigerians had committed acts of shame. Some for private profit, others who were otherwise decent people who had become prisoners to a terrible system.
Not surprisingly, Ikimi acting true to type abuse that magnanimity.
He was never sincerely committed to the party. He was always playing out
a PDP script. He only wanted the chairmanship of the party as a
bargaining chip for negotiations with his benefactors. His defection
purportedly on account of the loss of the chairmanship of the party is a
mere subterfuge, once his ploy failed he had no other objective within
the party, I knew he would go back to his sponsors. He is back in the
company he deserves. And APC is better for it.
-Bola Ahmed Tinubu
Nice response jagaban
ReplyDeleteI never trusted this Ikimi from day one
ReplyDeleteWhy would APC allow ur be party chairman? When they were fighting for democracy, Ikimi was busy selling out the country.
ReplyDeleteIkimi is just PDP's mole in APC and they found out
ReplyDeletethe guy ikimi should never have been invited into apc, he was no progressive, he will never be, and high time to snag off irritant.
ReplyDeleteWe all knw the truth about ribadu ' s failure in south west elections, so sunday dare nd his paymaster shld not insult nigerians by taking us 4 fools.2015 is just round the corner, we shall see wu the real fool is
ReplyDelete