…Says He Never Granted Such Interview
The Presidential Candidate of the Nigerian Rescue Movement at the 2023 general elections, Ambassador Felix Johnson Osakwe, has refuted reports in a section of the media quoting him as calling on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to drop his ministerial portfolio as the Minister of Petroleum and also asking him to sack the Group Managing Director, Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited, NNPCL, Mele Kyari, saying, that such reports are uncharitable and unpatriotic.
Amb. Osakwe also added that he couldn’t imagine himself, a committed reformist saying such things.
“I never said so and wonder why some mischief-makers would attribute such to me,” he said via press release made available to DAILY INDEPENDENT through his media office.
“The report is a blatant lie from the pit of hell.
“We have a pathfinder in President Tinubu,” the clergyman-turned politician said in the statement issued over the weekend in Abuja.
According to him, there is no iota of truth in the publication by the media houses involved, stressing that stressing that he has not spoken to any media platform or their agents on any issue in the last six months, let alone calling on “the pivot of the Renewed Hope Agenda and the pilot of a new and prosperous Nigeria, President Tinubu to abdicate his roles as minister of petroleum”.
According to the Delta State-born progressive politician, the President has since the inception of his administration set a commendable tone for reengineering the nation’s economy by breathing life into the socio-economic tissues of the nation that was abinitio in comatose.
He added that but for the reformist agenda of the President, the nation, Nigeria would have long gone into extinction.
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Ambassador Osakwe noted that the same publications falsely quoted him as asking NNPCL’s Kyari to resign.
On the contrary, he described the MD as a quintessential manager of the National patrimony who has done his best to keep the peace in the Niger Delta region.
“Our region is now so different from the past when youths went on rampage every now and then, adding that, the security of Petroleum infrastructure in the region is an initiative of the Kyari-led management in the NNPCL.
“Why would a rational and well-meaning citizen like me call for the sack of such a top-notch manager of our national resources,” Amb Osakwe asked.
“Kyari has fought oil thieves to a standstill through the engagement of Tantita Security Services Nig LTD, TSSNL and that firm has never faltered in the discharge of its assignments to the nation.
“That unfortunate report was only a figment of the imagination of reporters and whoever put them up to it.
“I couldn’t have granted such reckless and ill motivated interview calling on the President to resign his position.
” I was the first presidential candidate to congratulate Mr. President on his victory on NTA.
“I practically held on to our agents at the collation centre while some elements attempted to stampede the electoral umpire, and that was why our agent didn’t join in the orchestrated walkout at the situation room that night during the collation of the Presidential election votes,” he said.
He called on Nigerians to be patient with President Tinubu’s administration, maintaining that the president is setting the nation on the path of national recovery.
