Arewa

Arewa's NNDC, Northern Governors & Accountability

Bashir Ibrahim Hassan

For the interest of the non Hausa speaking readers of this news paper, Arewa, is Hausa word which means the North. For those who may not know, the New Nigerian Development Company (NNDC) is solely owned by the 19 Northern States of Nigeria. Originally, it was called Northern Nigeria Development Company. The company was established in the year 1946, out of the desire of the then Northern Regional Government to own a company that would play a key role in the economic development of the "poor and backward" North, Poor in terms of petroleum resources which the North never had. The company was incorporated as a limited liability company in the year 1966 with sufficient grant from the then Northern Government, under the visionary leadership of late Ahmadu Bello, the Sardauna of Sokoto.

NNDC was said to have lived up to its expectations in the early years of its establishment. But, now things seem to have been changing going by the way the company is run by the current management and lack of proper control on the part of its shareholders, the Northern States Governments. NNDC is said to be a conglomerate with spanning interest in many fields of economic endeavors i.e. Agriculture, Hospitality, Mining, Capital Market, Oil exploration and recently Telecommunications. The question here is, what has this conglomerate achieved, at least in the last nine years, in moving the North forward through these chosen economic ventures? It is very clear to observers, especially who value and cherish all the legacies of Sardauna, among which the NNDC is one, that the company is yet to make any remarkable achievement in its areas of economic exploitation, despite the huge investment made by the Northern States amounting to several billions of Naira.

Recently, the Northern Governors during their meeting in Kaduna reached an agreement with the NNDC to invest five billion naira in order to further strengthen the capital base of the company. There is nothing wrong in the Northern States Governors pumping in such a huge amount of money, if the Company is measuring up to standards, and its shareholders, the Northern States are reaping some benefits. Unfortunately, the entire North, has remained absolutely backward in all the areas the NNDC claims to have invested, e.g. Agriculture, Mining, Capital Market, Oil exploration, etc.

For instance, the NNDC was said to have set aside hundreds of millions and also used for Oil exploration and harnessing in the North, but this mere dream is yet to be transmuted into the reality. The question is: Is the NNDC capable in terms of technical expertise and other intricate requirements to explore oil in the vast land of the North? If yes, how long will it take the company to do that and at what cost? It can not be a sensible business idea for the Northern States to continue to channel public resources into the company for this project without any meaningful progress made for a very long time. The North should not be carried away by sentiment: the South has Oil, thus the North must also have at all costs.. The North can, if it considers proper, invest through the NNDC heavily into the Agricultural sector, the sector the North is generally believed to have performed wonderfully well before the discovery of Oil in Nigeria. What ever may be the defense of the NNDC for not abusing the public funds on its Oil exploration project, the fact remains, that oil exploration is not an all comers affair. To be able to succeed, one requires foreign partners who have huge investment and expertise. It is not enough to discover oil which is not of commercial quantity. It doesn't take ages to discover oil if it is there. Take the case of Ghana whose oil is discovered in commercial quantity in a relatively short space of time.

I would like to remind all the Northern States Governors, as a concerned citizen that NNDC is a company, and all companies are meant for business. Business is meant for profit. NNDC should be made to account for how much money it has invested into all its areas of business exploitation and how much profit was made from the investment, at least in the last nine years of Nigeria's fairly stable political experiment. The public, I mean the masses of the North, are entitled to know the shareholding base of each Northern State in the company, profit made annually, the profit sharing formula used in sharing the profit to its owners, the nineteen Northern states. Equally, the profit sharing policy should be based on the share holding strength of each share holder. This is the normal procedure the world over.

For nearly nine years, I have been following, but I have never read in any of the national dailies or hear from any other means of communication, how much was ever realized as profit by the NNDC and also shared to the Northern States, its shareholders. NNDC should not be made to be seen as a tunnel through which public resources are diverted by the Northern States Governors for personal interest instead of public business interest.

Personal efforts were made by my humble self before writing this piece to know the shareholding base of my home state, Kano, through the Director General of Kano's Directorate of Research and Documentation, Kano Governor's Office, Ado Kurawa, but without success. He said, when he contacted the kano ministry of finance, he was told by the ministry that they are not in possession of such record. Also made another effort, through the Director of Press to the Kano State Governor, Sule Ya'u. The story is as good as that of Ado Kurawa: he couldn't get it from the Kano State Investment and Properties Limited (KSIP). This action on the part of the Kano State Government, to me, is either a clear sign of inefficiency or lack of accountability. That, for the Kano State Government to say it is not in possession of the records of its investment worth billions in the NNDC. I learnt from a reliable source that, Kano State Government is the largest shareholder in the NNDC.

It would appear that Abdullahi Musa's article published sometime in September last year describing the NNDC as "Arewa's Bermuda Triangle" for poor performance and lack of accountability on the part of its shareholders, the Northern States Governments is quite justified.