CSO Urges Tinubu To Ignore Call For Interior Minister’s Suspension

A civil society organization (CSO), Conference of Civil Society for Transparency and Accountability (COCTA), has urged the presidency to disregard the publications by certain persons and organisations led by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), for the suspension of the minister of interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo.

The minister is alleged to own a company which benefitted from contract awards by the ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.

In his swift reaction, the minister said he had since disengaged from the firm in 2019 and presented documents from the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) to that effect.

Rising in defence of Tunji-Ojo, the director of COCTA’s strategic communications, Ambassador Haruna Abdulsalam, said in a statement that those calling for the suspension of the minister were only envious of his rising profile.

Abdulsalam said the malicious publication on X and other platforms are clear act of social media bullying and pressure on the office of the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria and an attempt to box the president into a corner to take a wrong decision in handling the issue of transparency and accountability among his cabinet members thereby bringing an atmosphere of lack of trust within his team.

“In as much as we commend the president for all steps taken so far to sanitize his government and bring culprits of financial recklessness to book, we also urge the president to be wary of social media urchins who are bent on derailing him and his team with unsubstantiated allegations and classification of financial crimes that has no root in law.

“We are surprised at the PDP, their cohorts and other social media rats for the sudden interest in anti-corruption drive as initiated and instituted by successive government of the ruling party who came with the mantra at a time the country was being strangled to death by the now opposition party. Obviously the opposition party did all their best to frustrate this war against graft, of course as the greatest beneficiary of that endemic act and they fought vigorously to stop it at all cost just for them to maintain the status quo of eating with ten fingers while in government to the detriment of the masses,” he said.