By Dokubo Harry
President Muhammadu Buhari could not have chosen a better person than Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu as the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources. Our president has been unwell and he recognizes that he cannot, in the present condition, work efficiently and effectively as not just Nigeria’s leader but Minister of Petroleum Resources. Buhari does not want the petroleum industry to suffer because it is the proverbial hen which lays the golden egg for Nigeria’s economy. Those of us from the Niger Delta welcome the president’s decision not so much because he is one of us as the fact that he is extremely competent and devoted.
No person can deny Dr. Kachikwu’s role in stabilizing the Niger Delta Region in the last few months. The result is that Nigeria is today able to produce and export some two million barrels of crude oil per day. The economy is for the first time in two years looking up. When the Ijaw people in Delta State demanded, as a condition for peace, continued building of a maritime university in their place, Kachikwu expressed solidarity with them. In contrast, the Minister of Transport, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi who is the immediate past Rivers State governor, ridiculed the demand, saying that the resources had better be used to develop the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) in Oron, Akwa Ibom State, into a degree-awarding institution.
The federal maritime university in Delta State is still on course. This means that people like Dr Kachikwu must have worked with Vice (now Acting) President Yemi Osinbajo to convince President Buhari that it is in Nigeria’s interest to proceed with the university which former President Goodluck Jonathan initiated but did little to get going. More than any other minister, Kachikwu has been visiting the Niger Delta, holding talks with militant youths and advising them to give Buhari a chance to address their historical grievances.
The Niger Delta people and leaders are, therefore, surprised to read that some people from a certain part of the country are protesting against President Buhari’s decision to elevate Kachikwu to the status of a substantive minister. Their reason is that Kachikwu is not from the north of Nigeria. It has even been reported that the so-called cabal was even against his appointment as the chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Board when he ceased to be the corporation’s Group Managing Director but remained the Minister of State for Petroleum.
The same shadowy elements have been spreading the absurd campaign of calumny that Kachikwu is not a core petroleum expert, despite having led ExxonMobil, the world’s biggest oil corporation, in the African region. Where were these fellows when Dr. Jibril Aminu, a brilliant medical professor, was appointed the Minister of Petroleum Resources? Didn’t Aminu do so well that he shamed petroleum engineers and geologists who were in office before him? Was it not Prof Aminu who revolutionized indigenous content in the Nigerian petroleum industry?
What the so-called cabal wants is to have every appointment in the petroleum industry occupied by them and do so in the North which they impoverish unconscionably. This mindset is extremely dangerous for even themselves. If there is no country, they cannot have access to oil and its derivative wealth. This is the mindset which led the NNPC GMD, Dr Maikanti Baru, to deliberately mislead the president over the status of Oil Prospecting Licences (OPLs) 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. President Buhari cancelled the oil blocks on December 20, 2016, the same day the NNPC CEO sent him a note asking him to void the acreages. The result is the growing tension in the region which, if not well handled, will plunge Nigeria’s petroleum industry and, by extension, the economy into a big mess.
In a memo to President Buhari last December 20, Dr Baru claimed that the oil blocks were part of Oil Mining Licence (OML) 13 which “was inadvertently” released for the 2007 licensing round. He advised the president to cancel the blocs and hand over the ownership to the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), an NNPC subsidiary. The president approved innocently, trusting his appointee. Of course, the NNPC CEO acted unprofessionally and immorally. The NPDC never had any stake in the acreages.
They were operated originally by the Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) on behalf of the NNPC, Agip and Total. But when Shell was driven out of Ogoniland in the wake of the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995, it could not access neighbouring Eastern Ibolo Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom State which is the location of the acreages. No oil production was taking place there for several years, forcing President Obasanjo to direct that the oil blocks be included in the 2007 bid round. Obasanjo wanted the nation to have value for the assets which were wasting.
By sheer coincidence, firms promoted by Niger Delta people bidded the highest amounts for the acreages. They won in a very competitive and transparent process. The NPDC participated but lost because it quoted a small amount. But the successful bidders could not take possession because Shell went to court against the Federal Government the very day the bidding was held. The matter was to be resolved amicably eight years later. With the revocation of the only blocks won by Niger Delta companies in the 2007 licensing round, even when the matter is in the Federal High Court in Abuja, tension is mounting once again in the oil-bearing region. President Buhari must be exculpated from blame because he acted innocently. He was not provided with the critical information he needed about the status of the blocks.
It is curious that the NNPC GMD wrote and sent the controversial memo of December 20 without informing the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources as well as the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation. He did not intimate the Director of the Department for Petroleum Resources, the industry’s regulator.
Far from fortuitous, the secretive action was deliberate. The NNPC helmsman did not want any person who could present a counterview to the president to know. When, as the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Mrs. Deziani Alison-Madueke sought the DPR’s advice on possible government’s intervention, she was informed of the consequences. She left the matter.
Harry is an engineer in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.
With Dr Kachikwu’s impending elevation, it is expected that dangerous politics like the NNPC leadership sending memos of far-reaching consequences to the president without input from the Ministry of Petroleum Resources or the DPR will cease. The petroleum industry needs discipline and order, not dangerous politics. The NNPC has over the years been overindulged by various administrations. President Buhari is on the right trajectory.
Harry is an engineer in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.