There are palpable fears by stakeholders that the oil industry reforms may have taken a back seat as the supremacy battle between Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources and Maikanti Baru, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) thickens.
A letter which has just emerged in the public domain, purportedly written by Kachikwu to President Muhammadu Buhari, is accusing Baru of insubordination amongst other infractions.
The letter, said to have been written on August 30 this year, came after several failed attempts by Kachikwu to secure a one-on-one appointment with the President on the matter.
“The cold war has been on for a while as Maikanti Baru has been alleged to be going to the President for approvals and if that is the case and the President did not deem it fit to ask Baru to defer to the minister on a number of issues, he (the President) is giving approval. That is bad enough. It then means that Kachikwu is being put there for the purpose of appeasing the Niger Delta people. Now that the issue is in the public domain, it is either that Kachikwu is punished by removing him or the president acts on the issues he has raised”, an industry stakeholder told BusinessDay.
The genesis of their frosty relationship between Kachikwu and Baru is traced to Kachikwu’s reign as the NNPC GMD/Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, when he removed Baru as the Group Executive Director (Exploration and Production) of NNPC and redeployed him to the Petroleum Ministry.
While there have been instances where both men said they have a healthy working relationship, BusinessDay investigations revealed that the cold war became public knowledge from their body language and other nuances, which ranged from avoiding each other at high level industry public functions to snide remarks.
Another industry source informed BusinessDay that at the signing of the domestic gas supply agreement with the Gas Aggregation Company of Nigeria (GACN) and Greenville Oil and Gas by the NNPC and Total Exploration and Production Nigeria Limited (TEPNG) joint venture (JV) for a $500 million mini Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant which took place at the Minister’s boardroom at the NNPC Towers, Baru was said to be visibly absent, as he was represented by Sam Ndukwe, a senior official of the corporation.
Workers at the NNPC Towers who spoke to BusinessDay, said that there were times when the block which houses the Minister’s office would be denied power supply, while the NNPC blocks would be fully powered.
At the Society for Petroleum Engineers (SPE) conference this year, Kachikwu, during his keynote address, wondered why some heads of parastatals under the Petroleum Ministry were absent, most notably Baru. He promised to find why they sent representatives when they knew he would be attending the event.
Meanwhile, the minister, in a press statement signed by Idang Alibi, director of press in the ministry of Petroleum Resources, has reacted to the publications of the letter, stating that the communication under reference is a normal procedural correspondence by the Minister to the President, relating to developments in parastatals under his supervision.
“It is most distressing to the ministry of petroleum resources that a confidential communication to the President on the performance of one of its parastatals can be made public”.
According to Alibi, the focus of the communication was on improving efficiency and deepening transparency in the oil and gas sector, for continued investor confidence.
“It is noteworthy that the President has been fully supportive of the efforts of the ministry to entrench good governance and accountability in the oil and gas sector”.
He said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources remains focused on achieving measurable progress in the implementation of the ongoing oil sector reforms, in line with the mandate of the President.
Olusola Bello
