By Christy Anyanwu
It was a gathering of the who is who in the oil sector recently in Lagos when they converged at an inaugural colloquium to honour their retired boss as he clocked 88 years.
Ogbueshi Ben Anne Osuno was pioneer head, Petroleum Inspectorate and director of the Department of Petroleum Resources.
Osuno’s role was significant not only for belonging in the oil and gas sector’s early generation but also because he rose to head one of its most important institutions, the regulatory NNPC’s Petroleum Inspectorate that later transmuted into the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) in 1988.
He is a fellow of the Nigerian Mining and Geosciences Society and a registered member of the Nigerian Association of Petroleum Explorationist (NAPE) and holder of the NAPE’s pioneer Excellence Award, given in 2015.
He spoke with Saturday Sun at the Civic Centre, Lagos, venue of the event in his honour.
You will soon clock 88 years and you have done extremely well in your career in the oil sector. What advice do you have for the youth of today?
I don’t belong to this generation. So, I cannot tell what their problems are. We think they have a problem, they think it’s a normal thing. They are acting in accordance to the environment. We may think that they are erratic but to them it’s normal. So I’m not blaming them. It’s the way they found themselves. If the system were right in our own way of thinking, you don’t find a coconut tree growing in a banana plantation, unless you plant it there. Otherwise, anything growing there would be a banana plant. So, if you find anything different, somebody else put it there. Who it is, we do not know. Maybe it is the system, whoever it may be. So, I’m not blaming the people.
Would you say the government does not have a hand in the plight of the youth?
No. Which government? Government is continuing. What is happening today didn’t start today. It started maybe some 10, 20, 30 years ago. Who are you blaming; the same government that came in last year? I cannot say government but the system has evolved and the children born in it are only acting in accordance with what they are seeing. Government is continuity. What is here today did not start today. It started 20 to 30 years ago. So, I cannot say it is the government. The system has evolved and the children born in it are only acting in accordance with what they are used to, what they have seen. So it’s not their fault, they are reacting to what they are seeing.
What lessons have you learnt about life?
You might influence what happens to you but you normally react to the environment in which you are. So, it depends on where you are. You would discover that the Asians, the Chinese, have their way of behaviour. Nigerians have their own behaviours. Even within Nigeria, in different areas. I keep saying it’s a matter of environment. What I have learnt is what I have been used to, that I have acquired since I was born. The many things you have learnt in school, sometimes you don’t even consciously think about it. Automatically, as you grow up, you know you ought to have your bath, you have to sleep at a certain time, and so many things you have acquired by virtue of your environment. There are things you have learnt from your aunts and uncles; a child doesn’t grow in isolation. You watch things around you. We grew up in the 1950s, observing certain things they were doing. Then you learned things. In the 1960s things changed; you learnt. In the 1970s, things changed, you learnt.
How was life growing up?
When we were growing up, my father was a catechist and we lived in a church environment. In the morning, by 4am, we went for morning prayers, and my father would not lock our gate in case a visitor came at night. If a visitor came at night, my mother would wake up to cook. Those were what we were used to in the 1940s and the 1950s. But these days you lock your door, if possible, with seven keys. If you don’t do that you are endangering your own security. We have learnt to protect ourselves. If the government doesn’t protect you, you learn to protect yourself, getting used to things around you.
You were one of the pioneers of Fisher High School, Umuahia, now Government College, Umuahia. Was that the Nigeria of your dreams when you were in school?
Umuahia was a large expanse of land that there were no fears. At night, children stayed in their dormitories. There were no fears; nobody came to harass us. There was no boundaries, no walls, and the children were disciplined. Nobody ran away from school. If it’s today, you build large security walls to keep off invaders and to keep the children in the school, otherwise they wander off. So, it is both ways. Because of the situation you want to secure them and because of discipline you want to keep the boys in so that they don’t go out.
Igbo students were in the majority. One or two northerners came later but, basically, we had people of South-eastern origins – Rivers, Efik, Ibibio, Cameroun were there and we were happy people.
As one of the leaders in the oil sector years back, did you envisage the hike in PMS price as it is today?
You are asking me questions that are too big for me.
Your advice to the current oil and gas professionals?
What was reigning in the oil and gas industry during my time was the name Chief Feyide. And if you wanted to know the industry, you better know who Chief Feyide was. With that name, if you saw any document signed by him, you took it seriously because you knew it was authority. But I didn’t meet him, although we kept talking about Chief Feyide in the industry.
From my days in Shell till the day I left and went over to NNOC, it was Chief Feyide’s name everywhere. I never got to meet him because he was away in OPEC until towards the end of 1976 when he came back from being OPEC Secretary General.
Seeing him was not easy because he was a very big man. I had to enlist the support of Orobare, who you was in the ministry at the time, to, please, help me get an appointment with Chief Feyide, just to meet him and get to know him in person, I said.
He booked the appointment and by the time we got to his office, the man was waiting. He went in and told him I was there. I waited and after some time he came out. I was still with Mr Orobare. He looked at both of us and said, Where is Mr. Osuno? Still looking at me he said: He’s that tall, he’s that tall! I was upset. What did he mean by that? I said in my mind.
He was expecting to see a six-footer, black, tall, well-built, like Mr. Orobare that took me there, who was also embarrassed when he said: He is that tall!
The next thing, Chief Feyide hugged me and he said, Welcome to the Group.
I turned to him and said, Yes, you have seen Mr. Osuno. There’s no hidden agenda about him, no hidden packages. What you see is what I am, there is no difference. He shook my hand.
Quoting back as regards what transpired in Chief Feyide’s office, what you see is what I am. What you are seeing is imagination, some may be true, some may not be, but I cannot argue about it because individuals have opinions.
Even when I was leaving the system, I believed I had a lot of enemies but apparently not, because each time I went to the office, I was well received.
What I’m going to tell people here who are still in service is that, yes, you may quarrel with people, people may not agree with you all the time, but that doesn’t mean that you are enemies. If somebody sees something wrong and he tells you, he wants you to correct it and change. You are not to take offence. He might criticise you and you think he’s wrong, you may have done something out of conviction that seemed right, not knowing there’s a reason you shouldn’t have done it, and when somebody tells you, you should be grateful to him. Don’t take offence and make him your enemy but accept it not as criticism but as correction and information to enable you to do things better.
So, people should stop taking their colleagues as their enemies because they think he wants their jobs. You think he’s standing in your way or whatever? It doesn’t help. Make friends with your colleagues. So if you are doing wrong he will correct you. If you are doing right, he will cheer you on and if things go on like that, we should all be happy.
As people in the oil industry, let us all shine as one and work together. If the industry is good, we will all be happy to be called members of the group that make the oil industry proud. Like we discussed here today, some years ago, around 1974, output was 2.4 million barrels per day. A few companies were working then, no problems. But today there are many more companies and the control of the industry is so big, and you cannot produce one million barrels a day. If you do 1.7mbpd, you are happy and you spend too much money to control that 1.7mbpd.
When it was 2.4mbpd, how much was being spent to control and supervise? Many things are being done by telephone now. Many things we can do on the phone are not being done today. Now to do one thing, it costs a lot of money and time, even to get one approval. So much money is being spent on the supervision of the industry. Why can’t it be streamlined so that the amount spent on supervising and regulating is reduced so that there can be more efficiency in the system? What two people could do before, now you need about 20 to 25 people to do it.
These are the issues. If we look back into history, how things were done efficiently, why can’t we be as efficient these days? We have more people, more educated, younger blood, but why is everything getting more complicated?
After retirement from the public service, what do you do to keep busy?
I retired from active government service in May 1993 and established a few private ventures in the oil and gas sector, among which are the former Niger Delta Exploration & Production PLC (now Aradel) where I served as chairman from 2002 to 2012, and African Petroleum (later Forte Oil, now Andova Petroleum), where I served as chairman from 2006 to 2007.
What do you think your colleagues will mostly remember you for?
I moved the Petroleum Inspectorate office to 7, Kofo Abayomi, Victoria Island. The move to Kofo Abayomi was due to the acute shortage of office accommodation for Petroleum Inspectorate staff at the NNPC corporate headquarters. Within a few years of assuming the headship of the Petroleum Inspectorate, I negotiated a project with NNPC management to erect a nine-storey building on the Kofo Abayomi site to serve as head office, and temporarily relocated the Petroleum Inspectorate to 44, Eric Moore Road, Surulere, in 1986.