Jonathan in a fix over Ribadu’s report

President Goodluck Jonathan appears to be in a quandary over the report presented to him penultimate Friday by the Nuhu Ribadu-led Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force, Sunday Independent has learnt.

It emerged at the weekend that what is giving the President more concern, apart from the show of shame some of the Committee members exhibited before him when the document was being presented, is the thinking of the international community with regard to the discordant tones the report has generated.

A Presidency source told Sunday Independent that President Jonathan had not only complained to some of his close aides, ranking politicians and government officials about how worried he is over the report, but has started making wide consultation on the way forward.

“From every indication, it does appear the President would not adopt the report. In fact, I would not be surprised if he disbands the panel and reconstitutes a fresh one because he equally believes something is wrong some where  about the Ribadu report,” our source said, adding that the President is also considering a probe into the allegations raised by the committee members.

Regardless, the last is yet to be heard of the controversy trailing the report as more members of the committee have taken turns to knock it, claiming the content is fraught with inconsistencies.

They also claim that the report which found its way into the media before it was formally presented was deliberately leaked to achieve  some clandestine purposes.

On Thursday, the Presidency which set up the taskforce had also declared the job of the committee inconclusive and consequently said the report was not implementable as presented.

The position of the Presidency had earlier been aired by some members of the committee who claim they were not privy to the report, and prominent committee members are crying foul over the hurried packaging of the report, its alleged surreptitious leakage to the foreign media before the formal presentation and the allegations of illicit collaboration by some members of the committee.

Apart from Olisa Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and former Head of Service of the Federation, Steve Oronsanye, who are claiming that the report could not have been ready since the work of the taskforce was yet to be concluded in line with the terms of reference given it, another member, Chief Anthony George-Ikoli, also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, insisted that “the committee’s assignment is factually yet to be definitely concluded, consequently a final report cannot exist, especially not in the form being circulated by the media”.

George-Ikoli presenting his position in a statement dated October 30, stated that the ‘Committee of the Whole’ never received, considered nor approved a subcommittee-processed report since the report-writing subcommittee never “received, reviewed, revised and submitted a preliminary report for the Committee of the Whole’s further consideration”.

He explained that the necessary levels and procedures to identify figures, facts and information as well as mandatory authentication and cross-checking to ensure information data integrity and credibility were yet to be carried out.

Pointing out that at the last meeting, which held in June, a written proposal presented to the committee members was advised to be subjected to the established integral norms and procedures of civilised conduct in such a setting, George Okoli decried what he termed the “organised and syndicated leakage of the report in the media.”

The development, he lamented, was unfortunate as it would neither aid the attainment of the anti-corruption agenda of the government nor the terms of reference of the committee.

Also Oronsanye, who is said to have sent a protest letter on the matter to the Presidency, joined issues with Ribadu over his alleged association and connivance with Addax Petroleum.

Oronsanye, in a four paragraph statement entitled “Right of Reply”, said though he was not in the mood to trade words with Ribadu, he does not have any relationship with the petroleum company and wondered why the Ribadu did not confront him, as a member of the committee with the facts if he was sure of them.

He challenged Ribadu to publish for the records any evidence he has about his alleged romance with Addax “rather than issue false statements on the pages of the newspapers.

The Directorate for Petroleum Resources (DPR) also knocked the report and insisted that the contents of the report on page 101 was misleading and required further extensive review with the relevant body to obtain the true picture.

In a response to the report, DPR stated: “On the debt collection, the DPR observed that the royalty computation of the task force consultant presented on page 101 of the report is not correct. DPR was prior to this audit, executing reconciliation exercise from 1990 to 2011 of royalty obligations and payments by all operators”.

Speaking the mind of the Federal Government on the issue at a press conference in Abuja last Thursday, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe said it would amount to injustice for anyone to expect government to implement in totality, a report the committee which wrote it admitted was not done properly.

Paragraph Four of the committee’s report, where the committee admitted that “due to time frame of the assignment, some of the data used could not be independently verified and the Task Force recommends that the Government should conduct such necessary verifications and reconciliations”, is being seen as supporting the DPR position.

Okupe had pointed out that the committee wrote a caveat on its own report in which it admitted that it did not fulfil the main ingredients of its terms of reference upon which the work given to it was expected to be carried out.

He regretted that the committee failed to carry out a very critical part of its assignment but instead passed on the duty of reconciliation and verification of data to the government.

The presidential aide therefore said that it would amount to injustice for anyone to expect the Federal Government to implement in totality a report which the committee which wrote it admitted was not done properly.

Oronsanye in a personal letter he is believed to have sent to President Jonathan towards the weekend reportedly pointed out that the report contained a lot of innuendoes and assumptions not supported by facts, a development he claimed he had observed and suggested a review, to no avail.

He is said to have informed the President that a significant portion of the data used in compiling the report had not been verified; a situation which led to his warning that he would decline appending his signature to the report if such figures were not verified.

The former Head of Service claimed that it was his initial position on the appointment of Ribadu as the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission while serving as a permanent secretary in the State House during Obasanjo’s regime and his objection to some irregular methods adopted at the taskforce that led to his being “framed” by the chairman on the Addax matter.

Source: Daily Independent