By Peter Omopo
A non-governmental organisation, the Nigerian Forum for Integrity (NFI), has called on President Bola Tinubu to ignore what it described as a coordinated campaign of blackmail against the Group Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Bayo Ojulari.
Speaking at a press conference in Abuja on Wednesday, NFI’s Executive Secretary, Nelson Idoko, dismissed the protest staged at the NNPC Towers by a group claiming to represent Niger Delta youths as “laughable and stage-managed.”
The protesters had accused Ojulari of corruption and mismanagement, demanding his resignation and insisting that the leadership of NNPCL should be reserved for someone from the Niger Delta.
Idoko, however, argued that the demonstrators were not genuine stakeholders. “They were youths hired from Abuja suburbs who could not even show their faces on camera,” he alleged.
He stressed that Nigeria, as a federation, does not permit any region to dictate presidential appointments. “Is it not the same Niger Delta that now has the Minister of the FCT for the first time in history? These cheap agitations hold no water,” he said.
The NFI further questioned the timing of the protest, noting that it came just a day after NNPCL announced progress toward meeting 100 per cent of its OPEC quota for the first time in decades. Idoko suggested that the demonstration was aimed at overshadowing the achievement.
“It is also curious that the protest was staged while President Tinubu is in Brazil wooing investors. Even his statement that Nigeria is no longer a corrupt country and a fertile land for investment was criticised,” he added.
The organisation urged Tinubu to expose those allegedly sponsoring the campaign, warning that such actions were designed to undermine government reforms.
“We have the names of the sponsors of these protests and media attacks and will submit them to the relevant agencies for investigation and prosecution,” Idoko said.
The group also advised the President to identify what it called “enemies within” who, despite benefiting from government, were secretly working with opposition elements to sabotage his administration.
