NNPC: Agenda for Ibe Kachikwu

As was widely expected, President Muhammadu Buhari has continued on his already promised decision to restructure the nation’s long-ailing oil sector by effecting critical personnel changes in the system.


After dissolving the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, he next moved on to relieve the erstwhile Group Managing Director of the corporation, Dr. Joseph Thlama Dahwa of his position, replacing him with the former Executive Vice Chairman and general Counsel of Exxon-Mobil Africa, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu. Equally fired and replaced are several top management staff of the corporation as well as heads of its component subsidiaries.


On assumption of office, Kachikwu has also moved very swiftly to carry out further personnel changes that have seen even more members of the old guard at different levels equally relieved of their duties. He is also literally swearing that he has the mandate of Mr. President to turn things around at the heavily mis-governed corporation. We want to believe him.


Indeed, evidence of the fact that a new order may certainly be brewing at the corporation can be seen firstly, in the fact that not only is a wholesale sweep is presently being undertaken within the cognate leadership cadre of the corporation, a sizeable number of their replacements are being brought from outside the system, thus signaling a resolve at the moment towards ensuring that new broom does indeed take charge of the reform agenda that is expected to be executed.


But that exactly is the point: the full details of the agenda need to be put on the table so we can comprehensively critique it. This is because though carrying out wholesale personnel reform to bring new and fresh good men on board is a good idea, it is even much better when the governing mechanisms around which the organization is run, are built around enduring institutional formats that have even greater overall impact and more assured sustainability on the job being done.


Even as the agenda is being worked out, it is important that we go beyond a lot of the limitations of the Nigerian environment that continue to hobble the NNPC and by extension our overall national petrochemical complex. In this wise, we make the case for the adoption of global best practices in the running of the corporation going forward. We also counsel on the need for very robust and meticulous exegetical studies on the global petroleum industry today with a view to ensuring that we are working and build with a wholesale appreciation of where the industry is today, as well as where it is definitively headed in the years ahead. For example, with green being the vogue now, this is not a time to undertake ecologically-insensitive carbon-heavy projects.


One other area of concern is over how much operational space the new GMD would be granted to carry out his set duties. This is because while we commend President Muhammadu Buhari for the appointment of this well-heeled and diversely experienced technocrat to preside over the affairs of the NNPC, there is also the need to take into consideration the fact that political actors through the years have seen the NNPC as the most handy, if not omnibus piggy-bank of government and as such constantly taken steps and measures to compromise its integrity, governance bearings and accounting structures. And with an increasingly assertive citizenry insisting at every twist and turn for even more and more transparency in the operations of the corporation, the easy way out for many a political actor has been to lay all of the blame for the failings of the corporation at the doorsteps of successive GMDs and go ahead to relieve them of their duties each time the temperature of public disdain rises. Little wonder then that the NNPC penthouse has been graced by as much as six GMDs in the past five years!


On his own part, we want to call Mr. Kachikwu’s attention to the fact that there is a sense in which by his appointment, he is indeed a poster-boy of the long-awaited new Nigeria that is run by men and women of professional candour, integrity and good conscience. As he tackles the day-to-day challenge of running and administering the corporation, he should be conscious of the fact that there are indeed a ‘cloud of witnesses,’ this writer included, that are cheering him on; hoping and praying that he succeeds. This definitely then is not a time to start weaving, or kowtowing to, silly self-enrichment schemes at the expense of the corporation and the Nigerian people who indeed are his ultimate employers. The nation is depending on him at this critical moment in time to run a changed and reformed NNPC that would demonstrate to all and sundry that indeed that new Nigeria that we have long yearned for is indeed possible and here. Mr. Kachikwu must therefore not fail.