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PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA
NNPC: Another Storm In A Teacup
Last Wednesday, the African Independent Television (AIT) tried to kick off a huge storm in its popular morning discussion programme, Kakaki, over the recent appointment of Abubakar Lawal Yar’adua (no relation of the country’s president, Umar Yar’adua) as the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) in succession to Funsho Kupolokun who lost out in a minor management shake-up.
The programme’s apparently one-sided panel was unanimous in expressing its strong objection to Yar’adua’s appointment on the grounds first, that as a long serving staff of the corporation, he had become part of its problems and could therefore not be part of its solution. Second, coming from a region that has no oil, Yar’adua, the panel argued was, in the first place, the wrong person for the job. Third, the panel pointed out, the president, as his own minister of oil, and the new GMD come from the same region, indeed the same state. This combination, said the panel, gave undue advantage to their region concerning the control of oil as the most important source of the country’s public revenue.
Before we examine the justifiability of AIT’s attempt at brewing a storm over the top job in the oil industry, it is perhaps helpful to remind ourselves that we’ve been there before. Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with our media in the past 20 years will, I am sure, remember how they raised such a huge furore over the appointment of two northerners, A.A. Maliki and Abba Gana, to top positions at the Nigerian Liquefied National Gas (LNG) in 1989.
Their appointments had led to an open quarrel between Alhaji Rilwanu Lukman, the oil minister, on the one hand, and the late Dr. Aret Adams and Dr. Ejike Onyia, the NNPC GMD and General Manager of the Nigerian LNG, on the other. The quarrel had, in turn, led to the suspension of the two by the minister.
Subsequently the southern dominated media, the press in particular, came down on Lukman like tons of bricks. Leading the attack was Newswatch, which described the quarrel as “Storm in NNPC” on the cover of its edition of October 16, 1989. “The power play”, the magazine went on to pontificate “is over the control of the NNPC and, therefore, the oil industry. In this the South is pitted against the North”.
The magazine then talked about how northerners were increasingly being “maneuvered” into senior positions in the corporation in spite of the fact that “most of the experts and high level manpower are southerners and foreigners”. These presumably sinister maneuvers, said the magazine, were highly resented by the southerners.
Not to be left behind, The Guardian and Daily Times all lined up behind Newswatch. The Guardian, for example, was specific and categorical in its editorial of October 13, 1989 about who, between Lukman, on the one hand, and Adams and Onyia, on the other, was the villain of the piece.
“The two officials”, said the newspaper,
Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter was that both Maliki and Gana were as qualified as anyone for the jobs. At the time of their appointments, Gana was a 1973 graduate of business administration and had been a general manager at the French multinational, the SCOA, while Maliki, also a gradate of the early 70s, was an accountant and the executive director of finance at the then well-run Arewa Textiles Ltd. Quite conveniently, The Guardian and the other publications forgot to tell their readers why and how it was that these two lacked the qualifications for the jobs in contention.
To return to last Wednesday’s attempt by the AIT to kick off another storm in the NNPC, it is not difficult to see how this too, like that of 18 years ago, is little more than a storm in a teacup, not least because there can be no dispute about Yar’adua’s qualifications as a 1976 graduate in chemical engineering with a masters degree in the same discipline. Similarly there can be no quarrel about his experience, having served the corporation and risen through its ranks over the past 30 years.
Because they could find no fault with his qualifications and experience, his traducers then tried to stand the fact of his experience on its head. The man, they now said, has been too long in the system and could therefore not be part of the solution to its problems. As the group executive director in charge of the downstream sector, they said, he had failed to make the refineries work, hence the country’s dependence on imports of white products.
True, the country had come to depend on imports for petrol, diesel and kerosine, etc, in spite of having four refineries, but any fair-minded and objective person could see that Yar’adua was not to blame. First, no less than a former group managing director of the corporation had alleged the existence of an oil mafia, which was profiting immensely from sabotaging our refineries.
In a telling editorial in its edition of December 8, 2005 titled “Obaseki’s Fuel Bomb”, Vanguard quoted Dr. Gaius Obaseki as saying
Second, even when the refineries could produce at some reasonable capacity as has been the case in recent times, the sabotage of pipelines by bunkerers and disaffected youths in the oil producing region had made it virtually impossible to regularly supply adequate crude to the refineries.
Next, was the argument about Yar’adua coming from the wrong part of the country to hold a top job in the oil business. This argument is so silly it is truly amazing how any sensible person would canvass it. Its logic is obviously that participation in any sector of the country’s economy is the exclusive preserve of only those from the region that produces its raw materials. Going by this logic not even the foreign experts whom the oil industry so much depends on have any business being in it. Obviously nothing could be sillier or more “primitive”, as the now rested Comet (September 21, 2000) said of a similar position taken by a conference of South-South governors and national legislators in Benin in August 2000 .
Yet otherwise sensible and intelligent people have persisted in canvassing it. For example, The PUNCH in a thinly veiled attempt at anticipating Yar’adu’s appointment as the most senior group executive director at the time of his appointment asserted in a front page story in its edition of August 10, that “A former staff of Chevron, Mr. Alex Nenyim, is said to have been okayed by President Umaru Yar’adua as Kupolokun’s successor… Nenyim’s appointment would have been announced on Tuesday, but for the protests from Ijaw people. The Ijaw were angry that Nenyim, like the Governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, is an Itsekiri”.
When this ploy by those who apparently planted the story in PUNCH failed with the announcement of Yar’adua as acting group-managing director on the very day the newspaper carried its Nenyim story, those who seemed desperate about Nenyim getting the job essentially because he is from the Delta, changed tactics. Quoting an anonymous “industry operator” extensively and with apparent approval, The PUNCH of August 13, said in a back page story that “The fact that President Yar’adua appointed Yar’adua in an acting capacity means Nenyim still has a chance.”
The newspaper then went further to quote the “industry operator” as saying
PUNCH would, however, not be the first newspaper to entertain this crude logic of oil business for oil producers only. Six years ago The Post Express which has since rested, quoted erstwhile governor of Delta State, James Ibori, as saying he saw nothing wrong with people from the region embezzling oil money. “Our son Opia”, the newspaper’s edition of July 11, 2001, quoted him as saying
Professor Eric Opia was the executive chairman of OMPADEC – the precursor of NDDC – and has been on the run because he is wanted by the authorities for massive fraud at the commission.
So far it should be clear to the reader that all the objections to Yar’adua’s appointment to the top of NNPC lack merit. The same cannot, however, be said of the objection to the president retaining the oil portfolio. True, appointing ministers is a constitutional prerogative of the president, but it is as unwise as it is biting more than one can digest for a president to take direct charge of any ministry, especially one as huge and complicated as that of oil and gas. Unwise not least because a president should never deprive himself of a whipping boy to take the flak when things fail, as they are bound to once in a while. In any case a president should never be the first line of defense in any war, more so a war against corruption in the corruption-prone oil sector.
Accordingly the sooner the president appoints a minister of cabinet rank for oil and gas, the better for his own health and for that of the country. Such a minister does not necessarily have to come from the Delta even though that would be politically expedient. For sure, however, he should not come from the region of both the president and the NNPC boss.
Even more important than where the minister comes from the president must take on the so-called oil mafia. As the Vanguard asked in its editorial of December 8, 2005, “Can the President (Obasanjo) assure Nigerians that this cartel no longer has a strangle hold on our fuel supply?” For Obasanjo you can now substitute Yar’adua.
If the new president wishes to succeed where his benefactor was a signal failure, not only should he not repeat Obasanjo’s mistake of retaining the oil portfolio, he must, as the Vanguard said, unmask and neutralize the oil mafia that has contributed so much towards turning our oil blessing into a curse.
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