I 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.
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 $1.7billion 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