In the last one week, there has been a battle of wits in the corridors of power in Nigeria. Specifically, the Minister of State in the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, looks set for a worst-case scenario, having protested to President Muhammadu Buhari, through a letter, that the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru allegedly made illegal awards of contracts running up to $25 billion, without recourse to the Board of the NNPC.
Kachikwu, as the minister of state in a ministry without a Minister, is the chairman of the NNPC Board; and one of the functions of the Board is to vet all huge contract awards by the NNPC. But a jaded minister of state, in his supposedly secret missive to the President, accused Baru of insubordination, by allegedly by-passing his Board to award the contracts.
An apparently worried Kachikwu also indicated in the letter that he had made several futile attempts to see Buhari in person for the purpose of lodging his complaints, wondering why Baru would treat his office with such disrespect. Besides, he said he smelt a rat in the award of such contracts to the tune of a colossal $25bn, without them passing through any known due process.
In his dissonance with alleged misconducts of the NNPC GMD, Kachikwu had written, apparently with passion, to Buhari this way: “I have been unable to secure an appointment to see you despite very many attempts.
“Like the previous re-organisations and re-postings done since Dr. Baru resumed as GMD, I was never given the opportunity before the announcements to discuss these appointments. This is despite being Minister of State, Petroleum, and Chairman, NNPC Board…Members of the board learnt of these appointments from the pages of social media and press release of NNPC.
“It is in the spirit of service and absolute belief in your leadership and integrity that I have, after one year of tolerating these disrespectful and humiliating conducts by the GMD, decided to bring this to your attention.”
Going into the kernel of his accusation against the NNPC boss, Kachikwu further wrote: “The legal and procedural requirement is that all contracts above $20 million would need to be reviewed and approved by the Board of the NNPC. Mr. President, in over one year of Dr. Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the Board. This is despite my diplomatic encouragement to Dr. Baru to do so to avoid wrongfully painting you as a President who does not allow due process to thrive in the NNPC.
“Given the history of malpractices and the public perception of the NNPC as having a history of non-transparency, the NNPC Tenders Board cannot be the final clearance authority for contracts it enters into.
“The NTB, which is a collection of level NNPC executives and COOs (Chief Operating Officers), with the GMD as chairman, cannot continue to be the final approval authority for multimillion dollar contracts and transactions involving NNPC to the exclusion of the Board.”
He explained further: “Board members have singularly and collectively raised these issues to no avail. The following major contracts were never reviewed by or discussed with me or the Board of NNPC:
· The Crude Term Contracts – value at over $10b
· The DSDP contracts – value over $5b
· The AKK pipeline contract – value approximately $3b
· Various financing allocation funding contracts with the NOCs – value over $3bn
· Various NPDC production service contracts – value at over $3bn – $4bn
”There are many more Your Excellency. In most of these activities, the explanation of the GMD is that you are the Minister of Petroleum and your approvals were obtained. However, the correct governance should be that the Minister of State and the Board review the transaction and give their concurrence, prior to presentation to you.
“As in many cases of things that happen in NNPC these days, I learn of transactions only through publications in the media. The question is why is it that other parastatals which I supervise as Minister of State or Chair of their Boards are able to go through these contractual and mandatory governance processes and yet NNPC is exempt from these?
“I know that this bravado management style runs contrary to the cleansing operations you engaged me to carry out at the inception of your administration. This is also not in consonance with your own renowned standards of integrity.”
Kachikwu, in writing the well loaded letter to Buhari, looked no more than an innocuous protester. That he is now shell-shocked that his private letter to Buhari had been leaked to the press is now a household read is assuredly, an understatement. The minister himself reportedly exclaimed that, ‘I am distressed that my private letter to Mr. President was leaked.” In tandem, same Kachikwu had in the memo to Buhari, countered his traducers, saying he was neither anti-North nor corrupt as being alleged; thus underscoring a sort of disaffection between him and some northern elements, or those keen observers choose to describe as “the cabal”, in the Buhari administration.
What may have also shocked many observers is that, despite a legion of grievous allegations levelled against Baru by Kachikwu, mum is the word, from the NNPC boss. This may be a clear indication that Baru is not embattled in any way. To make Baru’s silence louder, the Presidency too, up till press time, was yet to come up with any reaction to the dramatic battle.
However, those sympathetic with Baru have extended the tiff to the social media, using Facebook, twitter and instagram to defend him, as they stressed that he would not respond, as doing that would breech civil service code. But those in support of Kachikwu only metaphorically sneered, saying Baru’s silence was a clear admission of guilt.
The Senate has, nonetheless, refused to be obfuscated in the melee of these arguments, as it at the weekend opted to empanel a body of senators, to investigate the Kachikwu allegations, and also, probe the entire NNPC.
