By Ismail Adewole
In her classic work, “Reforming the Unreformable”, Nigeria’s former Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, chronicled the travail of conscientious public officers who sought to reform the hailing sectors of Nigeria’s economy. She revealed how entrenched, vested interests, who are top political and business elites, and other powerful interests, stopped at nothing to maintain the status quo, and perpetually keep the nation in a state of hopelessness in furtherance of their political and socio-economic selfish gains. Far reaching reforms that crippled their criminal enterprise came at a huge cost to the promoters of the reforms, including coordinated, blistering smear campaigns , peddling outright falsehoods to assail and soil the reputation of the drivers of the reforms that will restore sanity across critical sectors of the economy. She haplessly declared that, “When you fight corruption, Corruption will fight back”.
The scenario aptly illustrates the plight of the Managing Director/Chief Executive Office, Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, Mallam Mele Kyari, following his bold reforms, and painstaking implementations of key clauses of the Petroleum Industry Bill, that heralded sanity in the oil sector in tandem with global best practices. The fallout of reforms, and the sterling performance of the NNPC chief since he transited into his current role, have been a major source of trauma to many powerful economic interests, whose unpatriotic profiteering at the expense of the nation were stopped in their tracks. One of such attacks came on the heels of the clash of Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) and Dangote Industries Limited (Dangote Refinery) over regulatory issues, alleged substandard products and corporate ethical concerns.
Rather than responding to issues raised by the NMDPRA, the Chief Executive of Dangote, in a manner that is consistent with earlier with previous attacks on the NNPCL boss, dragged him in the mud, needlessly, dragged him into the fray, by alleging through inference that he (Kyari) owns a blending plant in Malta. In a failed desperate move to discredit top officials of the nation’s oil sector, and to elicit public sympathy, he lied against Kyari that has been widely adjudged as an ethical professional, who has brought remarkable stability and sanity into the petroleum sector of Nigeria.
A just man is as bold as a lion, Kyari refuted the spurious and unsubstantiated allegation in a statement posted on his official X (formerly Twitter) handle denying any knowledge of NNPC staff involved in such a fraudulent scheme.
He wrote: “I am inundated by enquiries from family members, friends and associates on the public declaration by the President of Dangote Group that some NNPC workers have established a blending plant in Malta thereby impeding procurements from local production of Petroleum products.
“To clarify the allegations regarding the blending plant, I do not own or operate any business directly or by proxy anywhere in the world with the exception of a local mini Agric venture. Neither am I aware of any employee of the NNPC, that owns or operates a blending plant in Malta or anywhere else in the world.
“A blending plant in Malta or any part of the world has no influence over NNPC’s business operations and strategic actions. For further assurance, our compliance sanction grid shall apply to any NNPC employee who is established to be involved in doing so if availed and I strongly recommend that such individuals be declared public and be made known to relevant government security agencies for necessary actions in view of the grave implications for national energy security”.
It is disheartening to learn that few patriotic managers of the nation’s critical economic sectors, like Kyari, could come under such attacks. On this score, it is imperative to x-ray the impressive records of excellence of Mallam Kyari, since he got into the saddle. He once told the nation how his crack team deactivated 6,465 illegal refineries, and also removed 4,876 illegal connections to a pipeline out of 5,570.
“Some of the scale of the infraction that we see is unbelievable; we are not able to deal with it. When you remove one connection, the next day in the same location, someone will replace it.
“In most of these locations, they are less than a hundred meters from the settlement; some are even less than a hundred meters from the local government headquarters,”
“It is very obvious that despite all the integrity issues with our pipeline and our facilities, we have capacity beyond two million barrels per day without doing anything.
“But today, we are struggling to meet the budget estimate of 1.6 million barrels per day. This by no means is related to crude oil theft; no, it’s not true, but the core issue that is affecting the other core issue is crude theft.
“No one will produce oil, knowing full well that he cannot dispose of it, and that’s why no one is putting money into it.
“In 2022, it became so obvious that if something dramatic is not done, we are going to run into trouble. On a specific date, our production came down to as low as 1.1 million barrels per day. “And on a particular day, we have gone below a million barrels to explain this except for the infraction and especially the oil thief,” Kyari made the startling revelation when he appeared before the House of Representatives Special Committee on Oil Theft.
In the area of gas development, Kyari also delivered exceptionally. On June 15, 2021, under his watch, the Corporation conducted a ground-breaking ceremony of the NLNG Train 7 Project . Likewise, the NNPC also successfully flagged-off the construction of the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano (AKK) gas pipeline project on June 30, 2020.
The project which was largely commended as a game-changer, is an integral part of the Trans-Nigeria Gas Pipeline (TNGP) with a capacity to transport about 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas per day. The performing NNPCL boss also led the corporation to achieve a $300 million reduction in the cost of the AKK Gas Pipeline contract via contract renegotiation from the initial $2.8 billion.
• Adewole writes from Abuja