After two weeks of grandstanding, the Minister of Special Duties, Michael Aondoakaa, yesterday apologised to his colleague at the information and communication ministry, Dora Akunyili, over his comments about her time at the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control.
Mr. Aondoakaa had courted controversy when he reacted aggressively to Mrs. Akunyili’s memo asking for power to be transferred to Goodluck Jonathan until the ailing Umaru Yar’Adua gets better. The former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice was reported in a national newspaper on February 8, to have said that Mrs Akunyili should, “go and confront herself with what happened in NAFDAC.”
Mr. Aondokaa, who was redeployed to the ministry of special duties by the Acting President, Mr. Jonathan, is also alleged to have said that Mrs Akunyili’s decision to bring her memo to the meeting of the Executive Council of the Federation was an attempt to appear as an angel.
“She wants to be seen as a populist. Whatever she wants from it is still personal. None of the council members has disrespect for the vice-president. As far as we are concerned, the Vice President is our leader and he is leading us.
What she is trying to do is self-seeking: let her go and confront herself with what happened in NAFDAC,” he reportedly said.
Akunyili’s demand
In a letter sent to Mr. Aondoakaa on Wednesday, titled, ‘retraction of libellous publication,’ Mrs. Akunyili demanded for a refutal of the statement within seven days, or she would file a suit against him for character defamation.
“I am particularly worried that he made such a statement alluding that I did wrong in a place that I fought criminals, to the extent that I almost lost my life” Mrs Akunyili told NEXT on Wednesday. “It’s just for him to explain what he knows to the world that I don’t know. He made the statement as the nation’s number one law citizen, so he might have been privy to an information that I don’t know.” Some other Nigerians also sent a petition to the House of Representatives on Wednesday, asking it to investigate Mr Aondokaa’s statement.
Wrongly presented
In his response to Mrs Akunyili’s letter, Mr. Aondoakaa denied the statement credited to him, saying his statement was misconstrued.
The embattled minister, in the reply he sent to the Mrs. Akunyili and titled: ‘retraction of libellous statement,’ admitted he made the controversial comments. He, however, added that the last part of the statement, the part that particularly irks Mrs Akunyili, “was meant to be in the positive but wrongly presented in the negative.”
He said, “The correct import of the above quoted words is that the Honourable Minister (Mrs Akunyili) had already earned a reputation for herself while at NAFDAC and needs not seek to do more on embarking on the present course of action to the detriment of a resolution already adopted unanimously by members of the FEC,” he said.
Mr. Aondoakaa’s letter, with the words, ‘my dear sister,’ handwritten on the typed document, also asked that Mrs Akunyili accept the assurances of his “highest regards and consideration.”
Several attempts to get the response of both ministers on the developments following Mr. Aondoakaa’s apology were unsuccessful.
Source: 234next.com
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