Some workers of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation have said that SAP, an enterprise resources planning solution deployed to boost accountability in the corporation, has improved their performance.
The result of a recent survey, a copy of which was made available to our correspondent, showed that over 92 per cent of NNPC workers who responded to the survey questions agreed that SAP had improved their business performance.
This development came amid controversy that the deployment of SAP system in the NNPC has not been successful.
The NNPC had, since 2012, adopted SAP as its official book of records and the only repository for financial and other transactions.
The late President Umaru Yar’Adua had, in 2009, approved about $35m (N6.89bn) for the deployment of the SAP system. This amount was said to have included the cost of critical related infrastructure, project team and project implementation in Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt refineries.
However, the recent shake-up at the NNPC under the auspices of the new Group Managing Director of the corporation, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, had brought the SAP project under serious scrutiny.
There have been allegations by an online platform that some top NNPC officials, including the Group General Manager, SAP/IT Department, Dr. Surajdeen Afolabi, who supervised the ERP implementation, used the project to steal billions of Naira. Afolabi had headed the SAP project since 2007 when it was originally conceived.
The report had also alleged that the implementation of the ERP gulped almost double the total amount approved for the project in 13 NNPC’s subsidiaries, affiliates and strategic business units.
Further report also claimed that Afolabi had been suspended indefinitely to allow for a thorough investigation of the SAP project.
However, investigation by our correspondent revealed that even though an investigation is ongoing, Afolabi had not been suspended from the NNPC.
A senior official of the NNPC, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was authorised to speak on the issue, said it was not true that money meant for the deployment of the SAP solution was stolen by Afolabi and some other NNPC officials.
He said, “The loads of lies in the report credited to an online news portal portrayed an impression that there is cost and time overrun, but the fact is that SAP system was contracted in modules, hence several approvals were received for each module. If you look at the project timeline you will see that many things were contracted and delivered within specified timeframe and within cost.”
The source recalled that $35m (N6.89bn) approved by the Federal Government in 2009 was for the initial baseline modules which comprise the financial and management accounting, sales and distribution and materials management elements.
He said the NNPC management, thereafter, identified the need to add more modules so that increased value could be derived from the SAP system.
Other modules added as the project progressed, the source said, included payroll, JV/PSA, downstream retailing, hydrocarbon accounting, project systems, plant maintenance, project systems, oil & gas secondary distribution, service station retailing, petroleum equalisation and business intelligence, among others.
He said all the additional modules were built and deployed in over 12 NNPC subsidiaries within four years by a team led by Afolabi. This, he explained, was responsible for the increase in the cost of the project.
He said, “The publication tried to deceive the public by saying that the cost exceeded what was approved. This is falsehood. The truth of the matter is that according to global practice, the deployment cost as a percentage of overall cost to implement such a project is about 30 per cent which excludes the cost of licence, project team and end-user training, connectivity, servers, computers and so on.”
The source said since 2010 when the SAP payroll went life, all NNPC staff members had been able to get their salaries automatically and can view/print their pay slips in the comfort of their rooms.
Commenting on the impact of the SAP in NNPC, the Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, told our correspondent that the SAP was working and had improved workers’ performance.
“SAP system is working. Workers have accepted the use of the SAP solution. It has indeed improved performance. The SAP implementation has been very successful,” he said.
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