LAGOS NOVEMBER 7TH (NEWSRANGERS)-The recent Press Release as issued by the Academy of International Affairs, led by Nigeria’s former External Affairs Minister, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, has continued to draw flaks 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.
Recall that the Academy of International Affairs has urged the federal government to institute a judicial board of inquiry on oil thefts to identify those behind the stealing of crude oil and petroleum products.
In a statement by its president, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi, he said the unwholesome trend which has gone on for too long and unending Turn Around maintenance of refineries need to end to rekindle Nigeria’s enviable position in the world oil market and provide substantial revenues for the country.
Reacting in a press statement 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 newsmen 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.”
Babalakin further explained that “…. a word of witness – set in a thoroughly historical context will soon show the characteristic helplessness of his press release, which in diverse moments only accentuate the structure of the domination of the class he represents.”
“Truth is, no one needs to be unenlightened by the methodology of Prof Bolaji Akinyemi. While he should have emerged as one of the hidden figures of our national life, critical to getting this nation on the path of innovation and sound political and economic rectitude, he has chosen the rather undesirable role to be boring; an attitude that saw to his premature ouster as Nigeria’s Minister of External Affairs in 1987.” He was noted to have said.
“Exactly what is the purpose of Prof Bolaji Akinyemi to request President Muhammadu Buhari to reject the pipeline surveillance contract awarded to Tantita? When superficially analyzed, it reveals a very disturbing fetishistic trend and unravels a concealed tendency through which Prof Bolaji Akinyemi realizes his values and reproduces the domination of his class.”
According to Otunba Babalakin “the illusion of the autonomy of this Academy, as well as the process by which they undertake their vicious enterprise, partly instantiates the translation of domination into hegemony, for this illusory autonomy masks the actual social relations and power relations which drive the purpose for the press release.
“To illustrate, the evident hostility of the character of his press release makes it urgent to ask under what purpose was the press release made to serve? Where was Prof Akinyemi and his cronies in the Academy of International Affairs when eighty percent of oil revenues found its way to private pockets; when the nation began to face dwindling foreign reserves and our subnational entities began depending on Paris Loan Refund to pay workers’ salaries and engage in critical infrastructural developments in their subnational entities? ”
“Without wasting time in making difficult conjectures, it is apparent that the egoistic pursuit of wanting to determine who gets what, where and how, seemed to be the inalienable inspiration of this touted academy of retired senior citizens who live by dehumanizing other patriotic intentions.”
Otunba Babalakin then retorted that, “It is instructive we ask how did it miss the Academy of International Affairs; a group that claims it was established for open and private debate on the emerging new world order, not to make any open denunciation of the criminal way the last surveillance contractor Messrs. Ocean Marine disposed itself in managing the entire ecosystem of that contract- they neither questioned the big business attitude of that corporate entity nor called for any judicial inquiry into the amount of oil that could not be accounted for under its watch.”
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