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The Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) has raised the alarm over lopsided appointments and deployments at the top management level of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) against persons from the southern part of the country.
Reacting to an article published by a national newspaper on Friday, June 5 that appointments in the state-oil firm were fair, the group in a statement by its spokesperson, Ken Robinson said such a view was “an upsetting gratuitous contrivance of fallacy.”
“It is preposterous that the author of the said article and his sponsors would have the boldface and temerity to assert that appointments and deployments are fair and just in that the North West and North East zones have 13 and 12 top management positions, respectively. The glaringly evident message is that just about all the prime positions of the NNPC are beyond the competence of staff 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,” Robinson said.
PANDEF queried the criterion used in appointments such that no southerner was occupying core management 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.
“The South South, which accounts for about 95 per cent of the country’s oil and gas reportedly occupies only 12 lower level management positions,” the group said.
It also expressed the worry that all NNPC strategic subsidiaries, departments and divisions were headed by persons from two of the six geopolitical zones, 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).
“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 had 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 the 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.”
