In few months, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu will be seen as a national boon or disaster. He will be hailed as a round peg in a round hole or tirelessly maligned as the fig that lets down the leaf, the affliction that has to be concealed or expunged. Until then, Kachikwu will stew in metamorphosis. The Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) dissolves into multiple identities characterised by the oil industry’s familiar bogeys, even as you read.
His transformation is akin to Daniel Orowole Fagunwa’s mythical forest ghommid’s. Other beings pass through him as if he were a wraith. He is like Fagunwa’s ghommid, who transforms into a tree, an antelope, a raging inferno, a bird, water and a menacing snake. While Fagunwa’s mythical creature assumes more or less the characteristics typical of its new category of being, Kachikwu struggles to preserve his individuality, mostly the capacity to think and act humanely, against the power and intimidation of Nigeria’s oil cabal.
Yes, Kachikwu, despite his brilliance and touted vigour, is hardly a match for Nigeria’s predatory band of oil Turks and cliques in the energy sector. But his office demands that he assumes a front thus his frantic posturing and pretension to purpose and valour. It would be delightful however, to see Kachikwu succeed where his predecessors failed woefully but he needs generous doses of forthrightness to do that. The NNPC’s GMD needs to be a man or the best form of the man that his employer, President Muhammadu Buhari wants him to become. Can he?
Despite his initial braggadocio or what is known in street parlance as Initial Gra Gra (IGG), Kachikwu seems woefully handicapped to effect the needed turnaround in the nation’s oil sector. Perhaps he isn’t, he simply glamourises the knack for making uninformed commentaries and pledges before assessing his capacity to deliver on his words.
Take for instance, his circus acts in the nation’s oil sector; a recent report by The Cable, an online medium credited Kachikwu with the information that the nation’s refineries are currently working at 30 percent capacity as against the minimum 60 percent required to generate profit.
He was quoted thus: “Personally, I will have chosen to sell the refineries, but President Buhari has instructed that they should be fixed. After they are fixed, if they still operate below 60 per cent, then we will know what to do…The 90-day ultimatum for the refineries to be fixed will end in December and Port Harcourt Refinery looks like the only one that will meet the deadline, but we will wait and see what happens at the end of the 90 days.”
If you take the pains to skim over the folds of officialese and doleful cliffhanger nuggets contained in his disclosure, you just might find that Kachikwu is tacitly preparing our minds for one of his several failures or his only failure perhaps. Earlier, he said that in view of the nation’s low refining capacity, there was need to establish more refineries in the country. “I am pushing to build new refineries next to our existing plants in order to boost the nation’s refining capacity for the common good,” Kachikwu stated, explaining that the new refineries will be developed by private investors and that NNPC’s role will be just to provide them with space close to the existing refineries to enable them share key facilities such as pipelines and storage facilities.
If you consider this in light of his alleged preference for selling off the refineries, you could be forgiven for getting lost in the NNPC head honcho’s maze of double speak and embarrassing retractions.
Following his recent cancellation of the oil swap deals instituted by the immediate past administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and his Petroleum Minister, Diezani Alison-Madueke, the NNPC boss did a cartwheel to tactfully rescind his decision. Apologists of Kachikwu claimed he was only doing the president’s bidding but critics of the NNPC boss earnestly aver that President Buhari couldn’t have taken the decision without the knowledge and approval of the NNPC boss. Whatever the case, Kachikwu is either a force that the presidency reckons with or an pitiable mascot, negligible human sound bite employed to unquestioningly rubber-stamp Buhari’s caprices. Is he?
It would be recalled that major oil tycoons became jittery and desperate to save their businesses in the wake of the NNPC’s cancellation of Offshore Processing Agreements (OPAs) and Crude Oil Swap (COS) deals entered with them. This was because their businesses plummeted in the absence of the several shady deals entrenched by the immediate past corrupt regime. Likewise, the federal government placed a ban on 113 oil vessels for perceived infractions. The presidency has since lifted the ban on the 113 tankers and the NNPC has tacitly reinstituted the controversial OPAs and COS, it would seem.
It would be recalled that the Ahmed Joda-led Presidential Transition Committee had recommended to the Buhari administration to carry out a comprehensive audit of all OPAs and COS deals entered by the NNPC. The committee said the audit would help government identify and claim any reimbursements for excess crude oil lifted under the controversial OPA and swap arrangements to establish the quantity of products delivered based on a fair and transparent audit process. The GMD of the NNPC subsequently hinted that all Production Sharing Contracts, (PSCs), Joint Venture Contract Agreements (JVCAs) and all other contracts between the NNPC and its various partners would be reviewed to reflect actualities in the global oil and gas industry. He stated that as part of the measures to optimise the marketing of Nigeria’s crude oil and secure new market potential, the number of off-takers for the proposed 2015/2016 term contracts, which would emerge after a planned rigorous competitive bid had been pruned from 43 to 16. The corporation however, extended invitation to few oil companies affected by the cancellation of the deal.
Despite Kachikwu’s celebrated show of running the process in the spirit of transparency, fears abound that the NNPC boss is impotent against the intimidating clout and pressure from certain quarters that he favours the same corrupt oil firms responsible for the misfortunes bedeviling the nation’s oil sector.
Given his sterling achievements in academia and the private business sector, Kachikwu seemed every inch capable for the onerous task of sanitising the grossly corrupt and ailing oil sector, at his appointment as NNPC boss. A doctor of Law, Kachikwu graduated with distinction from the University of Nigeria (UNN) Nsukka and he was the best graduating student from the Law School, winning seven of the available nine prizes in 1999. He holds the LLM Harvard Distinction and was best graduate in 1980 with specialisation in Energy, Petroleum Law and Investment. Kachikwu has more than 30 years experience in policy- making positions in the petroleum industry serving in various capacities thus he seems well equipped for the job but for a snag, he is a Nigerian genius. Nigerian genii seldom fluorish in public office. Ultimately, they serve as puppets or clueless characters rubber-stamping and enabling the greed of their principals or associates in corridors of power.
Kachikwu, like such genii, has betrayed little character or justifiable individuality so far in his position as NNPC boss. Is the high office gradually nullifying his fabled genius as it did the smarts of former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala? It is often said that a public officer assumes and reflects the character of his superior principal or employer; if that be the case, the presidency becomes the teat from which Kachikwu sucks his new identity. The impact so far, has been enlightening.
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Let me see if I can summarise your article: You don’t think EIK will succeed in at least two of the priority areas that as GMD he needs to deal with – primarily because you do not trust his motives.
Before you publish part 2 of this piece, please do us the service of actually trying to get even a slight appreciation of the real weight and complexity of the issues the NNPC faces in those areas – because clearly you don’t.
Secondly, if you want to be taken seriously it might help to include at least one original thought; clarify whether you are speaking for or are one of those benefitting/that have benefitted from some of the suspect contractual arrangements being investigated. If the latter then defend then I suggest you focus on trying to defending them directly.