Embattled Nigerian Petroleum Minister, Mrs Diezani Alison-Madueke has again been caught in the midst of public rage with allegations that her convoy crushed a journalist with an Abuja based Pilot Newspaper, James Momoh in Mabushi area of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja. The minister has been in the middle of raging corruption allegations in the petroleum sector she heads especially in the management of fuel subsidy funds where more than N2 trillion of public funds have been callously looted by officials and oil marketers in just one year. iReports-ng.com gathered in Abuja today that James Momoh was knocked down by the over-speeding convoy of MrsAlison-Madueke late on Wednesday night along the Mabushi expressway .After knocking him down, the minister's aides were said to have taken their victim to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC staff clinic in Abuja where he was later certified dead and his body subsequently deposited at a government hospital mortuary in Maitama. As at the time of filing this report, iReports-ng.com learnt that desperate efforts were being made by the minister and her aides to ensure that the incident is not reported in the media while the second option is to twist the incident and shift culpability of the accident to an NNPC shuttle bus which will be tagged as being the one involved in the fatal incident that killed the hapless journalist.
Few minutes after the initial report was posted, the Acting Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Fidel Pepple, in a statement which was being circulated by some journalists for a fee described as untrue reports that the convoy of Alison-Madueke was involved in a deadly car crash which claimed the life of a staff of the Pilot Newspaper in Abuja. Pepple however confirmed that a shuttle vehicle belonging to the corporation was involved in an accident which eventually led to the death of the Pilot Newspaper staff. "I want to state categorically that the unfortunate event of last night has nothing to do with the convoy of the minister as speculated. The accident involved one of our shuttle buses which regrettably knocked down a pedestrian in the Mabushi area of Abuja and was immediately rushed to the NNPC Medical Centre for attention. But sadly the young man gave up the ghost,'' he said. The NNPC spokesman stated that the Minister's convoy was not involved in the crash in any way noting that the vehicle in question is not part of the minister's pilot vehicles. He said the management of the corporation has taken steps to meet with the family of the deceased as well as the management of Pilot Newspapers.
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