By Nwafor Okafor
Presidential spokesman, Femi Adesina, says the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) appointed Margery Okadigbo as the Chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited to repay the kindness done to him by the late ex-Senate President, Chuba Okadigbo.
Adesina, in a piece on Friday titled, ‘PMB: Kind to the living and the dead’, stressed that though Buhari might be “strict and unbending on certain issues”, he is certainly not wicked as his detractors paint him.
Buhari had in the first week in 2021 appointed Margery as the chairman of the NNPC Board when he constituted the Board in accordance with the power vested in him under Section 59(2) of the Petroleum Industry Act he signed on August 16, 2021.
Adesina, in the piece, said the appointment of Okadigbo’s widow “confirms what some of us had always known. Muhammadu Buhari never forgets a good turn. He repays every kindness, every justice done to him, as much as it lies in his power.
“When you show kindness to the living, it is a good thing, something to applaud. But when you go further to do the same to the dead, it is something that places you on a very high pedestal; a man to be emulated, acclaimed, a blessed of the Lord.”
Continuing, the presidential aide said, “In his first outing in 2003, Buhari ran with the former Senate President, Dr Chuba Okadigbo, as vice-presidential candidate. They both challenged the result of the election, and were determined to get justice. But in September of that year, Okadigbo died. Very painful.
“Now, 19 years later, who has Buhari made Chairman of the NNPC Ltd Board? Margery, Okadigbo’s widow.”
