Reno Omokri, a former aide to ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, has reminded Chidiogo Akunyili-Parr, a daughter to the late former Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili, that her late mother wanted to be part of the Jonathan cabinet which she, in her book, described as a failure.
According to Omokri, after she was defeated in the Anambra Central Senatorial poll by Dr Chris Ngige, the former National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control, NAFDAC, boss, forwarded her name to Jonathan to get a ministerial appointment but was turned down.
Akunyili, who was appointed the Minister of Information and Communications in 2008 by the government of Musa Yar’adua, resigned the appointment after two years to seek election into the senate.
After Akunyili, who ran for the Senate under the platform of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) lost to the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) candidate, Ngige, she, according to Omokri, wanted to return to her ministerial job, now under Jonathan, but the door was already shut.
Akunyili-Parr, in her book, ‘I am because we are’, a biography on her mother, alleged, among other things, that her late mother described then President Jonathan’s cabinet as a “cabinet of mismatched candidates and portfolios”.
She further said that the Jonathan cabinet “was one of the first signs of the woes that would cripple Goodluck Jonathan’s government.”
And Omokri, who was a presidential aide under Jonathan, said, “Dora Akunyili is late, and though I know the reason why she was not appointed into then President Jonathan’s cabinet, in honour of her memory, I will refrain from revealing that reason.
“However, being that at the time she put herself forward to be considered for appointment in the Jonathan cabinet, she already knew those being considered, the question is raised as to why she would want to join a cabinet of persons she felt were sub-par,” Omokri said.
Omokri said if at all the late former Minister made such comment as quoted by her daughter, “it may have been made in the heat of the moment when she was sensitive and feeling scorned at her failure to make the Jonathan cabinet.”
He recalled that when Dora lost her life to cancer, then President Jonathan caused the Federal Executive Council (FEC) to hold an unprecedented valedictory session in her memory, adding that she remains the only former deceased cabinet minister to be so honoured.
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