Oil Thieves, Ex-NNPC Staff, Others Behind ‘Kyari-Must-Go’ Campaign — Group

A group, under the auspices of Nigeria Accountability Monitors (NAM), has lambasted the Coalition of Nigerian Legal Practitioners for calling for the sack of NNPC GCEO, Mele Kyari.

The group also accused some recently retired senior and management staff of the oil company of conniving with “idle lawyers and other hirelings” to attack the NNPC boss Mele Kyari and another top executive Umar Ajiya.

A press statement signed by chairman of MAN, Sabiu Ibrahim, described the lawyers coalition led by Adesina Bernard as “mischief-makers acting the script of a few among the recently retired officials of the NNPC in an overhaul exercise meant to reposition the company.”

Ibrahim, in the statement, described the anti-Kyari lawyers group as “hacks working against a highly proactive Kyari/Ajiya led management team that has been exposing illegal oil refineries run by big thieves in the country.”

He then queried: “Where does the Coalition of Lawyers stand? With oil thieves and mischievous persons who made good fortunes working under the Kyari/Ajiya management team but recently retired to pave way for routine, legitimate succession? Or are they with the big thieves running illegal refineries? Why are they openly opposed to the transparency in managing the NNPC as a company in which all Nigerians are now equal stakeholders?”

NAM, therefore, issued the Coalition of Lawyers a 48-hour ultimatum to tell Nigerians whether any reform policy of the Kyari/Ajiya management team is not necessary for the growth and economic development of Nigeria or not, and otherwise they should just “shut up”, and “stop crying wolf where there is none”.

NAM also challenged the lawyers group to name one person in the NNPCL at the moment, who they think has “the transparency and bravery to break the NNPC away from the inglorious past” than Kyari and Ajiya.

The group then warned the lawyers that it “will no longer fold our arms and watch ethnicity promoters being sponsored by oil thieves, attempting to needlessly attack the Kyari/Ajiya management team that has successfully turned around the fortune of the NNPC the way no one has ever done. Enough is enough.

“Though groups from the North have maintained unjustified silence over the attack on their illustrious sons in the current NNPCL management, we are fully prepared to legitimately defend the Kyari/Ajiya reforms, to put an end to media attacks guided by regional colouration.”