A group under the auspices of Buhari Legacies Legacies Solidarity Forum(BLSF) has taken a swipe at Nigeria Customs Service Controller – Hamid Ali, over what it described as “disrespectful attack on the President Muhammadu Buhari, by virtue of the President’s mandate as Nigeria’s petroleum Minister”.
A terse media statement signed by the group’s National Chairman, Timizi Imam described Hamid Ali’s recent media criticism of the Nigeria National Petroleum Company( NNPC) Ltd as “unethical and an abuse of the privileges he is enjoying as an official of the Federal Government”.
The group queried: ” When Hamid Ali came under fire for deliberately refusing to wear Customs Service uniform, the National Assembly asked President Buhari to dismiss him from service, but Buhari refused to so, thereby saving Hamid Ali from a humiliating exit from the government.”
Chairman Tirmizi went on to say that it was not surprised by the recent delige of attacks on President Buhari because “we’re approaching election year and desperate politicians are eager to undermine all the good records of Buhari’s war on corruption and the legacy of transparent management at the NNPC. Hamid Ali may have joined the anti-Buhari propaganda gang-up, to keep his seat under a new Federal Government in 2023″.
The group noted that the choice of NNPC as the target of a huge media budget campaign might have been informed by the reason that President Buhari is the nation’s minister of petroleum and the NNPC being the only strategic agency under the Ministry Petroleum, has become an automatic target for mischief”.
Tirmizi, in the statement, advised the Customs Service boss to “be cautious about openly attacking a President who appointed him — in the public domain, when he already has unfettered access to the Villa and to Buhari; and moreso when he is part and parcel of the same government”.
The group warned that it would no longer tolerate “the unethical attitude of Federal Government officials who are making a mockery of President Buhari”, while calling on the President to “immediately query” the Customs for “unethical conduct”.
