The Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has reiterated its position that appointments and deployments, at the top management level of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are lopsided agaimst the southern part of the country.
Reacting to an article published by a national newspaper on Friday, June 5, 2020, the group, through a statement by Hon. Ken Robinson
National Publicity Secretary, said any attempt to present to say appointments in NNPC were fair for the South was “an upsetting gratuitous contrivance of fallacy.”
PANDEF said it was “preposterous that the author of the said article, and his sponsors, would have the boldface, temerity, to assert that the appointments and deployments are fair and just; for the North West and North East zones to have 13 and 12 top management positions, respectively, insisting: “The glaringly evident message is that just about all the prime positions of the NNPC are beyond the competence of all staff of the NNPC of South South, South West and South East geopolitical zones origin, and in the entire oil and gas Industry, from which to poach Nigerians of competence into the soul of national economy.”
The Niger Delta wondered why southerners are not occupying such positions as Group Managing Director Chief Finance Officer, Chief Operating Officer – Gas and Power, Chief Operating Officer – Corporate Services, Chief Operating Officer – Refining and Petrochemicals, and Corporate Secretary to the Corporation and Legal Adviser.
It said all strategic Subsidiaries, Departments and Divisions of the Corporation, are allocated to persons from only two of the six geopolitical zones in the country, including National Petroleum Investment Management Services (NAPIMS), Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC), Nigeria Petroleum Development Company (NPDC),
NNPC Trading Company, Nigeria Gas Marketing Company, Nigeria Gas and Power Investment Company, and Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
PANDEF frowns at the fact that South South, which accounts for about 95% of the country’s oil and gas “reportedly occupies only 12 lower level management positions, with a spinning of only two, or three names, every time they seize yet another batch of strategic positions, with their flawed propaganda misinformation.”
Questioning why the North should control the NNPC, the group queried: “Do the northern zones share in the ecological devastation that the Niger Delta Region continues to suffer, day and night?”
The group said the South South geopolitical zone has only one member in the NNPC Board as Minister of State for Petroleum, Chief Timipre Sylva, “only sits on Board, at the discretion of President Buhari, who has continued to allocate to himself, the position of Petroleum Minister.”
PANDEF said NNPC Act of 1977, provides that the Board of Directors of the Corporation shall consist of six members, but “President Buhari has continued to violate the Act by appointing six other members to the Board” making it nine.
The group said it will continue to “insist on the reinstatement of the practice, whereby the position of Group Managing Director of the NNPC was, rightly, reserved for the South South geopolitical zone, which produces about 95% of the Nigeria’s crude extraction, equating to more than 90% of the National Budget.”