Former presidential aide, Reno Omokri has called on the Bola Tinubu administration to identify and prosecute anyone found to have leaked a letter containing Qatar’s rejection of a business and investment forum trip of the Nigerian president to the Arab nation.
The Herald can report that the letter dated February 22, 2024, was written by the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Abuja and addressed to the Protocol Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Nigeria.
The Tinubu administration has faced serious embarrassment since the letter leaked.
Reacting, Omokri said the administration must respond strongly or face further embarrassment.
“President Tinubu is too nice, and niceness is a weakness in Nigeria’s politics. Nigeria is a fairly brutal country, and on the scale with niceness on the left end and brutality on the right end, you may not want to move all the way to the right, like Abacha, but you also do not want to be too close to the left. You want to be somewhere in the middle, but tilting to the right, like Obasanjo.
“Whoever leaked that Qatar note verbale should be fished out, sacked, and prosecuted for violating the Official Secrets Act, as well as for economic and political sabotage. However, if you cannot fish out the specific individual or individuals, then you make a scapegoat of those in charge of the foreign affairs ministry.
“Sack the minister in charge of that ministry. Then, remove the civil servant who is the Permanent Secretary and reassign him to a less desirable ministry. Then, demote the Director in charge of the department from where the leak occurred.
“That will send a powerful signal to other ministers and permanent secretaries, who will sit up. Tinubu needs to run a short shrift. An aje butter cannot last as Nigeria’s President. We are not that type of country,” Omokri said.
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