BENIN CITY — TWO prominent Nigerians, Senator Francis Okpozo and the Publicity Secretary of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP), Comrade Godwin Erhahon yesterday faulted the composition of the 33-man palliative committee headed by the Deputy Senate President, Senator Ibrahim Mantu, saying the committee is a ploy by the President to buy time in office.
While Senator Okpozo said the committee is a stooge put in place by President Olusegun Obasanjo to carry out a deceptive agenda in impoverishing Nigerians and avoid the demands of Labour on the reversal of the prices of petroleum products, the ANPP chieftain, Comrade Erhahon acussed the President of adopting delay and diversionary tactics targeted at deceiving the people from demanding for the real issues on the state of refineries in the country.
Both Senator Francis Okpozo and the ANPP Publicity Secetary, Comrade Godwin Erhahon made their positions on the committee set up recently by President Olusegun Obasanjo known to Vanguard yesterday in Benin City.
Acording to the Former Deputy Senate President, Senator Okpozo, "the committee is meant to use some persons as a stooge to achieve presidential interest. The chaiman of the committee has no regard for the people because you cannot locate in which arm of government he belongs. He is a lawmaker but indirectly a co-ordinator of the executive and the judiciary. At no time in the political history have you seen him as a better alternative because of the roles he played in his state and the country. If the President travels, Mantu follows him. If the Senate President goes, Mantu is seen there with him and if the Chief Judge goes too, he is present. He is a person with no fixed identity and should not be allowed. I don’t trust such committee.
“What Nigerians are crying for is the reversal to the old prices. Let the committee of independent people negotiate with Labour and bring in recommendations. It should not be a diversionary committee. What is there is this; the two arms of government are not supposed to produce members of the committee. Civil society can bring in people, and government with neutral persons. No legislator should be brought in because they have not stood for truth and they cannot adjudicate as members. All of them are not to be trusted. It should be a neutral committee with a vision of finding a true position of trust and livelihood for the people.”
While the ANPP chieftain in Edo State, Comrade Godwin Erhahon contended that the action of the President in setting up the committee was to delay the people and find an escape option to the debacle created by the recent increase in prices of petroleum products.
“What we know”, he said, "is that the committee is a delay tactics employed by the President. He is too insincere to be trusted.
What Nigerians want to know is that those refineries owned abroad should be made public and for the Federal Government to tell the people where the fuel claimed to be imported are coming from. As a party, we don’t trust him. The ANPP believes that some persons who have stolen public funds to build refineries abroad are the ones urging government to continue to increase pump prices of petroleum products while obstructing the rehabilitation of local refineries so that they could continue to import fuel from their refineries.”
