Petroleum ministry: Allison-Madueke’s sing-song

Reading the answers given by former petroleum minister Allison-Madueke to questions put to her by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu of ThisDay newspapers was extremely tedious. It was as if she made every effort to use up the two or so hours which she so “graciously” allotted to the interview now that she has so much time on her hands.

I believe that I know Ms Nwogwugwu enough having seriously decided to follow her scholarly interventions starting from 2007 on the eve of OBJ imposition of President Yar’Adua on us. I would be damned if Allison-Madueke, outside of matters already common knowledge, convinced her or any of her readers about anything else. I daresay that very few of us have put much stock on this belated effort from an otherwise aloof minister to meet the public halfway to address its concerns.

Who told the minister that the issue of gas gathering, gas monetisation, unassociated gasfield and gas pipeline infrastructure development had any direct bearing on President Obasanjo’s NIPP project? One tragic series of omissions simply collided with a new one. That’s the typical story of failed governance and service delivery in our unfortunate country.

In 1982 I had stepped into the Ekpan offices of the new Nigerian Gas Company (NGC) to discuss a wide range of issues with the management. Before long, I had told the managing director (I think) that the NGC was a misnomer since it owned no gas assets, just the pipelines to Lagos. In over 30 years, we have hardly moved one single step from that sad situation.

In my widely published article “Gas to Power Conundrum”, I had alluded to my public exchange with a former GMD of the NNPC, Chamberlain Oyibo, on the need to immediately address the establishment of a national gas pipeline network/grid. For a man with his background not to have seen what I saw then remains a mystery. And now the otherwise wordly-wise operators of our energy sector have proved unable or unwilling to plan for the gas supply pipelines to the new NIPP plants and others. Meanwhile the nation is being sold the dummy that the problem just sprang on them by surprise. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I often remind anybody who cares to listen that outside of Lagos, Kano is the next major industrial centre in Nigeria. I could not fathom why as far back as 1982 natural gas was not being piped to Kano and by the same token to Minna, Abuja, Kaduna, Zaria, Sokoto and Maiduguri.

Gas is almost synonymous with electric power. The people at OBJ’s NIPP certainly did not invent the concept. However, they deliberately undermined their own undertaking by refusing to do their homework.

It is a no-brainer that the valiant efforts of companies like Ashaka Cement to stay in production over the years in Gombe State would have been a much simpler proposition if they had natural gas supply. 

For the above reasons, I am deeply incensed by the gloating by Allison-Madueke that the NIPP-NNPC activities under her watch successfully laid a paltry 500km of gas pipelines. That comes to less than 1.5km/week over the eight years of the Yar’Adua-Jonathan administration. I will never cease wondering if actually we are in any hurry as a nation. Will Allison-Madueke please check what the Chinese, Brazilians or the Indonesians achieve in a good month or quarter. Her projections going into 2018 are in no way impressive.

In conjunction with her boss and many subordinates, the former petroleum minister had failed woefully to provide reliable service to Nigerians. This is beyond dispute. With this background one fails to get the exact point in the very long dribble in the interview where Allison-Madueke strived to justify her refusal to cooperate with the legislators who had attempted to probe the purported leasing of aircraft by the minister. For good or ill, our “elected” representatives reserve the right to investigate any matter under the sun. That includes what our president had for breakfast, especially since we are footing the bill. To prevent our reps from doing their job is a mark of lawlessness and crass irresponsibility. What revelations she belatedly made to ThisDay’s Ms Nwogwugwu could and should have been made to the proper authorities in a timely manner, on demand and at the appropriate forum. Outside of her media handlers and immediate family, Allison-Madueke cannot expect sympathy from the citizenry.

It would be counterproductive to try to debunk many of the issues raised by the former minister in this patently self-serving interview. Many of the conclusions of observers like this writer were arrived at over a long period of time. It is highly unlikely that a hitherto reticent and unapproachable minister of a badly-run government agency will suddenly come up with new “facts” for whitewashing her tenure ten days after leaving office. Attempting to engage her point by point, issue by issue, will only aid to keep her in the public eye and may unwittingly be deployed in aid of a revisionist script of her (dis)service.

As a numbers person, I cannot without facts malign the ex-minister with any direct accusation of theft, be it $10bn or $20bn. However, like very many Nigerians, having dealt with NNPC and its subsidiaries, I know enough to conclude that the place is rotten through and through. Anytime we seem to forget or are in doubt, the NNPC, synonymous with the oil and gas sector, provides us with one more mind-boggling scandal. Allison-Madueke can claim to be a saint, even a Mother Teresa, but the house from which she has just been ejected reeks like an abandoned mortuary.

Oduche Azih