Erasmus Ikhide
Legendary author Chinua Achebe once echoed the eternal phrase that “if you don’t like someone’s story, please write your own” instead of hugging a transformer. It doesn’t add up in climes like ours that every now and then we pelt stones at maladministration and official graft to the high heavens, yet never take conscious to effect a positive change when given little opportunity to lead. It is common place for many at the helm of affairs at top Nigeria’s MDAs and parastatals to reinforce failure, but there exist some conspicuous ‘few’ like Mele Kolo Kyari, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) that has vowed not to disappoint themselves and the nation as well. They came prepared, because success is when preparation meets opportunity. Christopher Columbus was not a fool when he warned that you can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Without being economical with the truth, its a known secret in Nigeria that the mention of the name ‘NNPC’ raises the thinnest eyebrows; because many has regarded it as the cesspool of corruption and cash cow that feeds the insatiable greed of those who found themselves calling the shots at the post of oiling behemoth.
Yes! A cesspool of corruption in a nation where joblessness, poverty and insecurity remained unchecked. A nation where tens of thousands and millions of children of school age roam the streets freely, begging for bread and constituting public nuisance. A nation where billions of dollars allegedly vaporized from the NNPC in the past, unaccounted for. In fact, the downtrodden on the streets of Nyanya, Abuja will readily appraise anyone working at the NNPC as a millionaire because of the rogue fleecing of the nation’s resources predominant there.
To buttress the common man misrepresentation to a very large extent, President Muhammadu Buhari couldn’t trust any Nigerian with the Ministry of petroleum but to make himself the acting Minister of Petroleum. Without trying to glorify corruption, its evident here to state how Mele Kyari’s guts brought the long sought glory and honor to the NNPC.
For the first time in June 2020, he killed one medusa by publishing the 2018 Audited Financial Statement of the NNPC. The statement covered all the 20 plus subsidiaries in the NNPC group. It was the first time in 43 years NNPC accounts would be audited and published for scrutiny! Before then unaudited monthly financial and operational reports were published but Kyari is the first Group Managing Director (GMD) to subject the accounts to an independent audit. However, sarcastically, the audited accounts exposed the very reason why previous GMDs failed to embark on such a suicide mission. The NNPC reports were usually calamitous.
Again, Mele deserves an applause for taking the bull by the horn and exposing the drains through which our common patrimony was distributed among the few. Mahatma Ghandi again noted that an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind, in the light of this Mele Kyari scored another A1 by mediating and securing a truce between Almighty Shell/Belema oil, operators of OML 25 and the oil well’s host communities in Akuku Toru Local Government Area of Rivers state.
This happened just a few weeks of assuming office in July 2019. Addressing conflicts with oil producing communities in the oil rich Niger Delta region is a sine qua non for stable oil production capacity which in the long run will translates into millions of dollars needed by the country to service its recurrent expenditures, capital infrastructures and huge debt burdens.
Luckily enough, crude oil production under his watch has continued to sky rocket. The NNPC under his eagle eyes also executed the NPDC OML 65 project which should generate more revenue and create jobs in the areas of operation. The NNPC under his proactive leadership has continued to canvass for a shift in the mono-cultural economy of the country; this is hinged on the impact of COVID-19 which has reduced the demand for oil and made oil prices to plummet. In a tweet on August 19, 2020, Mele asserted that, “a year ago, #NPDC was producing around 136,000 bopd. Today, we are doing 260,000 bopd. This is a magnificent growth in any upstream company. Our target is to grow this to 500,000 bold. This is possible within two years as we have lined up projects to achieve that “ Impressive!
He posits again in the accompanying tweets, “#NPDC is a top grade company that’s producing oil at a cost cheaper than most of its competitors. This is part of our target of bringing down the cost of production to $10/barrel. We are using the #NPDC as a benchmark so that once it delivers, every other company must deliver” Visionary!
The Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC) is a fully owned subsidiary of the NNPC engaging in oil and gas exploration and production activities in the hydrocarbon-rich regions of coastal Nigeria, both onshore and offshore. Under Mele’s turnaround fists, the NPDC has become the largest producer of gas in Nigeria.
Another milestone is that Mele’s NNPC is breaking new frontiers with its partnership with Akwa Ibom state government to establish a logistics base in Ibaka. This is part of the efforts to develop capacity and grow local content. The project is sited on a 2000 acres of land contributed by HE Udom Emmanuel Governor of Akwa Ibom State.
Hear Udom Emmanuel on transparency at the NNPC: “Since I become a member of the National Economic Council, I have had cause to interact closely with the oil and Gas industry. I want to tell you that we are feeling the positive impact of the present NNPC board and management in terms of accountability and transparency (and especially) in financial reporting. We hope that they keep this up”. What can be more sterling than this unreserved commendation to NNPC led leadership.
Simultaneously, the NNPC exported $378.42m worth of crude oil and gas in June 2020 and thus earned $4.60bn from crude oil sale in one year. The figures were contained in the NNPC June 2020 monthly financial and operations report!
To break the news, the uninterrupted fuel supply in the country in recent times is a testament of Mele’s innovativeness. Prior to his appointment, hiccups in the supply of petroleum products was a common feature in the Nigerian economy. The incessant disruptions in fuel supply affected Nigerians ability to plan effectively. They could not predict when the next fuel scarcity would hit the country and families were sent to panic mode, spending days and nights in long fuel queues at filling stations. But Mele’s disrupted all that with his finesse and managerial acumen.
His midas touch can also be seen in the commissioning of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline which had been a story for the gods since the 80s. To mitigate the impact of the corona virus on the people, the NNPC under Mele introduced the launch of a Petroleum Industry Intervention Fund which garnered a pledge of N21billion and is being used to fund medical interventions across the country’s six geo-political zones: prominent the ongoing construction of an infectious Disease Hospital in Maiduguri, Borno state and partnership with ThisDay Media Group, Sahara Energy, the CBN and others to build the 230-bed ThisDay Covid-19 isolation, recovery and treatment centre in Abuja.
Though the NNPC is not out of the woods yet. It is safe to applaud the guts of a GMD who aspires to clean the Augean stable instead of being an impotent King at the NNPC Towers. Indeed, Mele has started an unrivalled revolution – TAPE (Transparency, Accountability and Performance Excellence) towards a greater transparency and efficiency at the nation’s top oil conglomerate. We can only but hope for the best as the match for NNPC repositioning and the oil sector reinvention begin.
Ikhide, a public affairs analyst writes from Lagos via [email protected]