Opposition Congress for Progressive Change, CPC has described Doyin Okupe’s reaction to General Muhammadu Buhari’s comment as unintelligent.The party said the nauseous, intemperate and inane mannerism of Okupe, the senior special assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan as “a collective disgrace to us as Nigerians.”
“As a Party,” CPC said today, “we have often counseled that the churlish demeanor of Dr Doyin Okupe is deleterious to the Jonathan regime. The nauseous, intemperate and inane mannerism of Dr Doyin Okupe as a Presidential aide is a collective disgrace to us as Nigerians. Whilst it is understandable that there is usually a strong desire to desperately hold on to a rehabilitative Presidential appointment -in a clime bedeviled with festering deprivation and corruption- there is nothing noble in talking when there nothing to be said.
CPC added that, “the penchant for Dr Okupe in attacking whatever GMB says, with concomitant jettisoning of reason, is despicable and stands condemned. The good that the President can do to himself will definitely not be in pandering to the obsequious apologists around him like Dr Okupe but in properly distilling the well-meaning pieces of advice of acknowledged Patriots like GMB.
Read the full text of CPC’s statement below:
OKUPE’s unintelligent response to Buhari’s statement.
At the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), we have noted the cavalier, but utterly fatuous, statement by Dr Doyin Okupe, the Presidential Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs, as a reaction
to the assertion of our National leader, General Muhammadu Buhari (GMB). It would be recalled that, at an interactive session with Journalists after the CPC Board of Trustees’ meeting on Wednesday,
November 07, 2012, GMB had unambiguously labeled this PDP government of President Goodluck Jonathan as the author of the political variant of Boko-Haram.
At a Channels’ interview session on Thursday, November 08, 2012, Dr Okupe abandoned reason as a tool for dialectical engagement (based on verifiable fact) and sounded like a broken record in mouthing the same over-used propaganda (not based on substantiated fact) that GMB incited his supporters to resort to violence during the 2011 electioneering campaigns. He said inter-alia: “during the election,
during the campaign, General Buhari himself campaigned for violence, so it is too late in the day to try to back track. Those who sow wind should not try and start and begin to look good.” It was this same
capricious but unfounded falsity that Dr Reuben Abati, his colleague in the business of image laundering project for President Good-luck Jonathan, wrote in his Guardian Newspaper column in May 2011; the
subject of a libelous litigation that Abati is desperately making attempts to untangle himself from.
For the sake of preserving the records from the desperate attempts of revisionists in the Nation’s power corridor, let us examine again the facts that stare us in the face about the consanguinity of this
PDP-led Federal Government of President Good-luck Jonathan with the Political Boko-Haram that had, in the last two years, inflicted incalculable damage on the essence of our Nationhood.
Fact one- Since the advent of the fourth republic which effectively started on May 29, 1999, aside the agitation of the Niger-delta militants for resource control, there had not been any structured
infrastructure for mass attack on innocents and religious institutions as had been seen in the last twenty-five months. While Dr Good-luck Jonathan was still vying for the Presidential nomination of his Party, People’s Democratic Party (PDP), there was a bomb blast near the Eagle Square, Abuja during the Independence anniversary celebration on October 1, 2011. Whilst the dust was still settling on an infamy that claimed innocent lives with many others severely wounded and without any preliminary report from the security agencies on the incident, the President (Dr Goodluck Jonathan) spoke: “It is not MEND.” A perspicacious check on the President’s statement would suggest that he had prior knowledge of the source of the blast. Of course, in the succeeding days, the Campaign Manager of one of the Political elements (from Northern Nigeria) that was contesting the party nomination with
him was invited for questioning by the Nation’s secret service as a way to deflect public gaze towards him. When he withdrew his candidacy, the president quickly incorporated his campaign manager
into the ‘Good-luck Jonathan campaign’ organization!
Fact two- In May 2011, Dr Reuben Abati, then Chairman, Editorial Board of Guardian Newspapers and Friday columnist of the same tabloid, wrote a piece in which he laid the blame of the post-election violence of April 2011 elections at the doorsteps of GMB. It did not matter to the writer that he had no empirical evidence to support his impudent assertion. Curiously, it was upon this decrepit literary predication that all other spurious attempts (on the Cyber-space and Nation-space) were based. After President Jonathan was sworn in on May 29, 2011, he replaced his former Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Ima Niboro, with Dr Reuben Abati! The question is: was this appointment a fitting reward to Dr Abati for the hatchet job of assisting to blacken GMB’s pedigree?
Fact Three- On Friday, August 26, 2011, the United Nations’ building in Abuja was bombed by a suicide bomber, leaving trail of several fatalities and many others with serious injuries. Asked if the attack
has adverse effect on the image of Nigeria, the president said, “Of course, wherever you have terrorist attack in any country, Nigeria is not an isolated case. Many countries have suffered from terrorists
attacks, may be it is the turn of Nigeria. But we are on top of the situation”. On the first year anniversary of the bombed UN building, the government of Dr Good-luck Jonathan provided N3.2Billion to rehabilitate the UN house, made up of N2.6 Billion to start the building and N600Million to provide temporary accommodation, in addition to promised refund of $580,000 for the treatment of victims.
It did not really matter to this profligate PDP government that the United Nations, in its world-wide operations, has comprehensive insurance for its buildings and workers, even against terrorism! Was
the offer by the government of Dr Good-luck Jonathan made because, “it is Nigeria’s turn for terrorism?”
Fact Four- In January 2012, President Good-luck Jonathan told a bewildered nation, still smarting from the spate of murderous bombings in the Northern parts of the country, that his government has been
infiltrated by Boko-Haram. The cogent questions are: How did the President know this as a fact? With the elaborate surveillance and espionage infrastructure under his watch, why has the Nation not been
informed on the unmasking of these fifth columnists in his government? Since the preponderance of the cabinet members in his government consist of Party folks, has this challenge been finally resolved in
the usual PDP ‘family’ affair?
Fact Five- In February, 2012, Mohammed Ali Ndume, a serving PDP Senator from Borno South, was arrested for links with Boko Haram. In March 2012, the Senator deposed to an affidavit, wherein he stated that all his activities with Boko-Haram are known to the Nation’s Vice-President, Mr Namadi Sambo. There had not been any official rebuttal on the assertion, which realistically connotes acquiescence!
Fact Six- In April 2012, the erstwhile National Security Adviser to the President, General Andrew Azazi stated with a gusto that is devoid of ambiguity that Boko-Haram is PDP. It is a known fact that, as things stand today, President Good-luck Jonathan is the Leader of PDP!
Fact Seven- In April 2012, Henry Okah, the leader of the Niger-delta militancy group (MEND), deposed to an affidavit before a South African court that President Good-luck Jonathan was the sponsor of the October 1, 2011 bomb blast near Eagle square. There had not been any official rebuttal from the Nation’s Presidency!
Fact Eight- In October 2012, Mr James Ineh, an Assistant Director with the State Security Services (SSS), told a Federal High Court that Senator Ali Mohammed Ndume gave Attorney-General of the Federation
(AGF) and Minister of Justice Mohammed Adoke’s telephone number to the Boko Haram. The raison d’etre for this reprehensible behavior was to ensure that the AGF influenced the Borno Election Tribunal to favour PDP’s cause!
As a Party, we have often counseled that the churlish demeanor of Dr Doyin Okupe is deleterious to the Jonathan regime. The nauseous, intemperate and inane mannerism of Dr Doyin Okupe as a Presidential
aide is a collective disgrace to us as Nigerians. Whilst it is understandable that there is usually a strong desire to desperately hold on to a rehabilitative Presidential appointment -in a clime bedeviled with festering deprivation and corruption- there is nothing noble in talking when there nothing to be said. The penchant for Dr Okupe in attacking whatever GMB says, with concomitant jettisoning of
reason, is despicable and stands condemned. The good that the President can do to himself will definitely not be in pandering to the obsequious apologists around him like Dr Okupe but in properly
distilling the well-meaning pieces of advice of acknowledged Patriots like GMB!
God bless Nigeria.
Rotimi Fashakin (Engr.)
National Publicity Secretary, CPC.
(Friday, November 09, 2012).
