A Non-Governmental Organisation, NGO, International Network on Inter-Cultural Dialogue, has called on President Goodluck Jonathan not to yield to pressure to sack the National Population Commission, NPC, Chairman, Chief Festus Odimegwu.
Twenty-four commissioners in the NPC had recently demanded Odimegwu’s sack.
The President of the organisation, Mr. Chris Ajugwe, made the call yesterday in Onitsha, Anambra State while reacting to the commissioners’ demand. Ajugwe said those calling for Odimegwu’s sack were those who did not wish Nigeria well and wanted the country to remain backward, without a credible standard headcount.
He said: “It has come to my knowledge that whenever a sensitive political position is occupied by an Igbo man, revisionists and tribal
bigots would syndicate campaign of calumny to remove him. “A good example is that of Prof. Barth Nnaji, a professor of international repute and the architect of Jonathan’s road map to power reform.
Nnaji was unceremoniously sacked as the power minister through frivolous petitions of alleged conflict of interest, after he had disclosed his interest in geometric power company which is well known to the whole world and which he put into blind trust before assuming office as power minister.”
Ajugwe regretted that as soon as Nnaji was sacked, his detractors who also had conflict of interest in the privatisation of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, who did not disclose their own interest before his sack, used their proxies to conduct a bazaar and bought off the company at a give-away price. He said: “Today, we have started witnessing the evil fruits of Nnaji’s sack with the darkness that has descended upon the nation.
“In the same way, it will not be in the interest of the Presidency and Nigeria as a whole if Odimegwu is sacked merely because 24 busy-body NPC commissioners who want the old status quo of backwardness and analogue way of doing things and are resistant to change and fit into the modern transformation agenda as represented by Odimegwu, the former Nigerian Breweries, NBL, boss.
