Ribadu vs Oronsaye:Drama in Aso chambers

Leon Usigbe, who witnessed the drama that played out in the Aso Chambers of the Presidential Villa when three special task forces set up by the Federal Government on the petroleum industry came to submit their reports to President Goodluck Jonathan, brings an account of the development that almost assailed the integrity of the Ribadu Report.

“THE president has said come and submit a report today, so what? If we are not ready, we are not ready.”  These were words uttered by Mr Steve Oronsaye, the former Head of Service (HOS) and deputy chairman of the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force when the task force, along with two others, came to submit their respective reports to President Goodluck Jonathan last Friday. The statement was the climax of the drama that unfolded as Oronsaye and one other member of the task force openly disowned the report that was about to be submitted by the chairman of the Task Force and former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu.

Oronsaye’s grouse was that the report was not implementable because the due process had not been followed in producing it. He thought there was no big deal in the president asking for a report to be submitted and those concerned coming out boldly to say they were not ready with it rather than submit what could not be very useful to government just so that the president’s directive could be fulfilled.
When he said “So what?”  and the manner he said it, there were certainly a number of people in the packed Aso Chambers who thought that it smacked of impudence for him to have said so. The loud murmurs and the turning of faces among the president’s guests and government officials suggested that it was a terrible thing to have been said in the presence of the Number One citizen of the country. Oronsaye obviously realised the discomfort his statement had caused and quickly sought to explain himself, to say that the task force should have been courageous enough to admit to the president that its report was not yet ready.  He had taken his time to advance his opposition against the submission of the report based on his observed flawed nature of the process.