The Lagos State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria has described as shameful the attempt of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media, Dr. Doyin Okupe and the PDP to defend himself on the weighty allegation of defrauding the Benue and Imo State government of huge sums of money through unexecuted contracts. The party says that even as it feels the corrupt act is in tandem with the PDP’s well known proclivity to corruption and treasury looting, it expected both Okupe and his party would have resigned his appointment or sacked by the presidency and his party apologize to Nigerians for such act of misdemeanor.
In a release in Lagos, signed by the party’s Lagos State Publicity Secretary, Joe Igbokwe, the party damned the EFCC for its disgraceful intervention in the matter and said that the Okupe case is just one further case to show that the PDP and the governments it has ran for the past thirteen years are intrinsically webbed to corruption. It warns that any further day Okupe stays as the spokesman of the Jonathan government deepens the perception of graft and corruption, which is so prevalent in public perception of the present regime.
We sincerely sympathise with the Jonathan government which has happened on the sudden perverse reasoning that it needed an propagandist to fight the nauseous perception it has brought on itself through cluelessness and indulgence in unmitigated corruption. We however see its efforts as failed in the choice of a propagandist that is so besmirched by cases of defrauding and weighty corrupt acts, which should have seen him spending time behind bars and not speaking for any presidency that desired to improve its woeful image among a people it governs.
We note that when the facts of Okupe’s shady deals with both the Imo State and Benue State governments were revealed, Okupe and his party, well known for pandering to looters and questionable acts, were quick to dismiss these allegations as mere fabrications by the opposition without any shred of facts. With the emergence of incontrovertible facts proving Okupe’s culpability in these cases, we note that he and his party have amended their reactions and launched on a vain glorious mission of scavenging for every nauseating reason to ensure Okupe retains his job. We wonder what manner of ruling party will not only serve as haven of treasury plunderers but provide nauseous cover for these shady characters whenever they are unmasked. So annoying is Okupe’s effort to invent whodunit in a clear and concise case as the Benue contract swindling case by forging an empty alibi of severing himself from a company where he and his family members hold over eighty per cent stock. We wonder who, in Okupe’s perverted reasoning and his party’s vacuous defense will bear the brunt of his company’s indiscretion if not the owner of the company who is Doyin Okupe and his cohorts.
With the resolve of the Benue State government to take up the case with the evasive EFCC, we wonder who will come on trial except the owners of the company or is there a company without owners in this case?
We are not surprised that the presidency is showing its usual complicit approach to this open case of public stealing. To Nigerians who have grown weary of complaining of the tolerant attitude of this presidency to acts of corruption and official misdemeanor, we are not surprised that the presidency is not seeing the damage a soiled spokesman, with huge cases of corruption trailing it does to its image; much more sever than could be handled by a battery of attack dogs. While it is too tall to expect any official of this government or the PDP to resign on charges of corruption, we want to put the Jonathan presidency and the PDP on notice that they are shredding the last confidence of Nigerians on governance by their shameful and open endorsement of corruption and we warn that they are greatly impairing democracy by this open and bizarre inculcation of a culture of corruption and public stealing to the conduct of governance business in Nigeria.
We demand that this soiled washerman should throw in the towel by resigning his appointment for the cost of managing his image would be so burdensome to this challenged and faltering regime. We ask his appointees to fire him for his image liability rubs off on their own image and worsens the image of the country, which has taken a horrible bashing in the hands of the PDP these thirteen years of licentious governance.â€
Joe Igbokwe.
Publicity Secretary,
Lagos ACN.