This was contained in a release signed by its National President and Secretary and made available to newsmen in Abuja. The association made particular reference to the NNPC spokesman, Mallam Garbadeen Muhammad who was given an ambiguous posting that leaves him in limbo.
Until the recent postings, Muhammad was the Group General Manager, Group Public the NNPC. But in a very curious action, he was moved to the position of ‘General Manager Communication and Strategy’ while still retaining his GGM position.
The organization said this is “enough to destabilize anyone and kill their morale”. The online publishers also queried the rush with which the GMD went about the posting. They observed that if Baru’s motives were sincere and in the interest of the corporation, he would have waited another couple of days when the NNPC Board would be inaugurated and then run the process through the board. “That way, he would have avoided the suspicion and errors that normally accompany a one-man know all decision.. But as it were, Baru can hardly defend himself against the accusation of carrying out a personal vendetta against his perceived enemies. “It is very possible”, says the online publishers that “Muhammed who joined the NNPC only about 6 months ago is a victim of Baru’s hate and vendetta, who has never hidden his disdain for so called outsiders joining the NNPC”.
The group described the attitude as being “particularly dangerous”
Examining Mr. Garabadeen’s case, the online body of publishers noted that “Garbadeen was invited by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Kachikwu who then doubled as GMD to come and serve his country. Garbadeen accepted to serve out of a sense of national duty. He left a flourishing media practice, a respectable job as Editor at Large with The Sun Newspapers, a popular and respected columnist and at the time the prestigious position of the President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) to serve his country, only for him to be treated shabbily and wickedly.
This injustice is unacceptable under any guise. It is in this light that we call on President Buhari, whose sense of justice is not in doubt to intervene and salvage the reputation of a honest and patriotic citizen whose only crime was that he answered the national call to serve his country at the expense of a brilliant career that he built painfully over the past two decades”.
The association further said that “apart from discouraging competent Nigerians at home and abroad from making sacrifices for the country, such inexplicable inconsistency, coming less than six months after a similar exercise will spook investors and stun the growth of the oil and gas industry.
The online media practitioners further averred that if indeed the President granted approval for this injustice, it must be because he was misled by Dr. Baru, and that is why the President and Board of the NNPC have a moral obligation to review the exercise and wherever infractions are detected, they must be redressed.
Recalling the role Garbadeen played during the fuel subsidy standoff with Labour and other stakeholders, the online publishers maintained that “humiliating Garbadeen so cruelly for the personal satisfaction of the GMD is sad and a depressing indicator of why Corporation has been going down over the years. The NNPC is bigger than the interest of any individual and injustice to one is injustice to all”, the association stated.
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