…Accuses him of support for big business interests
The recent Press Release issued by the Academy of International Affairs, led by Nigeria’s former External Affairs Minister, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, has continued to draw flak from very concerned citizens including the public, who have variously, wondered where the former Minister and his associates had been, while the country’s natural resource and treasury were plundered at will, by the big business ventures managing the nations crude reserve.
In a press statement reacting to the comments by the Akinyemi-led Academy of International Affairs, Chief Executive Officer of Reynold Gibson International Company Limited Lagos, Otunba Toyin Babalakin who can best be described as a very concerned stakeholder and Patriot, lambasted the former Foreign Affairs Minister and his group for the unsavory comments made in the press release.
According to Otunba Toyin Babalakin in the statement, copies of which were made available to journalists in Lagos on Saturday, he said, “In this country, we are gradually becoming aware of the works of Professor Bolaji Akinyemi, but thus far, we can only situate it from the point it took off, only after this nation had moved on in its formative epochs in the creation and transformation of Nigeria from a colonial dependency, through the optimistic era of drum and trumpet nationalism, to the period people like Bolaji Akinyemi began to be involved in framing its international thoughts which period largely saw more of national fragmentation and the emergence of a largely distorted national narrative.
“This has continued to belie the facts of our national integration in which the dynamics of identity politics created competing versions of domestic hegemonies in a manner that almost destroyed the gains of the pyrrhic victory which gave this nation independence in 1960.”
Babalakin fuming said, “At his age and time, one would have thought that Professor Bolaji Akinyemi will enter a national historical discourse as a responsible senior citizen to help it in its search for national affirmation.
“But he appears not to have chosen this noble path as the press release, he hideously framed through a proxy Academy of International Affairs, perhaps concocted by him, to drive a neo-colonial new world order that promotes big business agenda, against the recent award of pipeline surveillance contract to Tantita Security Services limited, by the NNPCL, seem to suggest otherwise.
“We argue that it is either that the Academy is brazenly provocative and seek to protect its crony or that it is astonishingly ignorant.
“Bolaji Akinyemi cannot in all good conscience own up to his claim that the contract awarded to Tantita Security Services amounts to an exercise in futility nor can he advance any singular proof that any component of Tantita had been involved previously in any scandal relating to oil theft. The much he has done is to advance a wide-ranging scheme of speculations, in the way he always does, to cover his real intentions in the matter,” Babalakin stated.
Speaking further in the press release, Otunba Babalakin expressed his further doubts as to the purpose of the Akinyemi-led Academy of International Affairs by asking, “What has become apparent in the recent rescue effort of Messrs Tantita, far from the madding hallucination of the Academy of International Affairs, is the discovery of a four kilometer remote pipeline put there by big business interests, which findings, may have distorted the discovery of a four kilometer remote pipeline put there by big business interests, which findings, may have distorted the projected new world order over the which the retired senior citizens of the academy gloat about but in the process, got their egos ruffled. Beyond this, we also know about the capture of a bunkering vessel laden with over 600, 000 Mt of stolen crude. This finding was brought to our notice by the public interview granted to BBC Hausa by Mr Bala Wunti, who is the GGM National Petroleum Investment Management Services, which helped to underline the fact that many powerful vested interests, using confused civic façades may have had their partnerships in these criminal activities scuttled.”