Let us make something clear here, as President of Nigeria, Buhari is the chief executive officer of Nigeria. And as the chief executive officer, he is the overall boss of the nation’s economy, the same way as the commander-in-chief of the armed forces he is the nation’s security officer, along with being Nigeria chief diplomat and cultural spokes-chief, especially because as an executive president he doubles as the head of state and head of government. Being the head of the executive branch, President Buhari is, undoubtedly, the overall boss and chief supervisor of all federal ministries, departments, and agencies.
So, from this, it shouldn’t be surprising if the president decides to be the minister of petroleum. After all, wasn’t a former US president, Harry Truman, who popularizing the “The buck stops here,’’ meant that at the end of the day the president takes full responsibility of all actions and in-actions of his government. In other words, as an executive president, he takes all the credits and discredits for all good decisions and bad decisions made by his government respectively. Little wonder Truman went further to say, “After everyone else has avoided making the decision, I will have to do it.’’
It is why there is no need for raising the kind of eyebrow currently being raised across in Nigeria since the president announced his headship of the petroleum ministry. Since former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s eight years as president he was practically de facto minister of petroleum, wasn’t that enough precedence? If the reason for raising the present eyebrows by Nigeria could be because Obasanjo’s headship of the oil ministry was synonymous with corruption and poor management, then, one should look at both Obasanjo’s and Buhari’s leadership styles along with their past experiences in the industry to qualify any of them head the ministry.
Inasmuch as he was previously Nigeria’s head of state between 1976 and 1979, not having previously headed the oil ministry, he had no direct experience in this regard. In the case of President Buhari, with his kind of series of involvement in leading the oil, first as the petroleum minister and chairman of the NNPC from 1976 to 1979 — during which Nigeria built most of its current refineries and petroleum pipelines crisscrossing the nation — and second as the Petroleum Trustfund Chairman during the Gen Sani Abacha military regime, his kind of industry experience should no doubt make the needed sector reform possible.
One other thing we shouldn’t forget to take note of is the fact that it is going to require someone in the position of the president to make certain nationalist decisions in the industry without having to expect inevitable collisions with the present no-nonsense GMD of NNPC, someone who as I see him wouldn’t take any nonsense from any minister of petroleum, especially if he as a junior petroleum minister has to be reporting to a politician-minister who might not be truly conversant with the deep-seated kind of overhauling the entire industry requires. The president in his infinite wisdom, knowing this possibility, and to prevent such potential collision, decided to be the one supervising the ministry, which means that Mr. Ibe Kachikwu should be reporting directly to him as the overall supervisor of the ministry of petroleum.
Also the need for the president to become the overall head of the oil sector is so important this time around especially given the level of corruption and lack of transparency in the way the affairs of the petroleum ministry are managed in Nigeria. Or are we all witnesses to the level of decay in the country’s oil and gas sector? For how long should we accept such a status quo, given that as the major provider of government’s revenue and as the main foreign exchange earner, oil and gas sector remains the mainstay of the country’s economy? That with the return of democracy rather than the rot being reduced, it has grown so deep that in recent times the decay has worsened.
We all know the mind-boggling looting that took place under the watch of former President Jonathan, from fuel subsidy scam, involving round-tripping, fuel smuggling, and politicians and political parties all helping themselves in sabotaging our economy, and the military taskforces set up to crackdown on oil smuggling became themselves the new smugglers. The corruption, patronage and cronyism came to become widespread that with the very help of the NNPC officials, fuel importers simply moved their empty cargoes around the ocean and returned them empty to claim millions of dollar subsidy on fuel neither brought into the country nor supplied. The illegal bunkering (oil theft) high-rocketed to the point that as high as 300,000 barrels of oil got stolen daily, with this criminality involving a high-profile gang of top politicians, high-ranking military and NNPC officials, which cost the country as high as $9bn annually.
We all know how during his eight years as Obasanjo administration, acting as the de facto minister overseeing the petroleum ministry he seized every opportunity conferred on him to indiscriminately and discretionary allegedly giving away oil blocks to his family members, close friends and well-wishers, including his sons and daughters, petroleum advisers such as Lukman, friends such as the prince of Kano, and governors agitating for reserve control such as governor Atta of Akwa Ibom State. Foreign friends and allies alleged to have benefitted from Obasanjo’s oil block largesse included Andrew Youngs (former US Ambassador to the UN), and Carl Masters. Others alleged to have indirectly benefitted included Thabo Mbeki former president of South Africa, Bill Clinton, former president of the US, and Tony Blair and George Bush former British prime minister and former US president respectively.
The question about what happened during General Ibrahim Babangida regime, when the sum of $12.2bn, being the oil revenue bonanza from the first Gulf War in 1991, remains to date unanswered. Also the estimate of $4bn oil money according to World Bank’s estimate was the amount of oil money stolen by Abacha, not to mention the high level of looting that took place during Abdulsalami Abubakar’s short military regime between 1998 and 1999.
And how the immediate past minister of petroleum Diezani Alison-Madueke, became the empress who supervised the worst corruption ever since the establishment of NNPC in Nigeria, with tens of billions of oil and gas money missing. We shouldn’t also quickly forget how the then government in power used fuel subsidy to enrich the boys and powerful party members, to the tune of over $60 billion during the 16 years. Also let us not forget how as a result of lack of transparency in the country’s oil industry and the NNPC, both local oil companies and IOCs in collusion with top NNPC officials used so-called joint ventures cash calls to loot the NNPC through the inflation of costs to as high as 1000 per cent. In fact, the level of fraud and looting went as far as NNPC refusing to remit any revenues to the treasury, which between 2007 and 2014 was as high as $40bn.
Since there is no better time to bring to an end this culture of looting, corruption and impunity in the country’s sector, particularly at the NNPC, than now, we should applaud the president for his readiness to add to his already crowded schedule, his personal supervision of the sector. One thing we should all give to President Buhari is that he remains, along with the first executive president of Nigeria, Shehu Shagari, and former President Yar’Adua the only upright and patriotic leader who is corruption free and never used his offices to amass wealth. In his assets declaration we all heard that he has no oil blocks, no foreign accounts, etc. notwithstanding that here is the same man who is former petroleum minister and chairman as well as former chairman of Petroleum Trustfund.
If we want to know how saintly Buhari could be qualified in the present public looting of our oil patrimony once in the custody of our leaders and their puppet, let us demand that all former presidents and military dictators such as Goodluck Jonathan, Olusegun Obasanjo, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and Ibrahim Babangida, along with former military to officer like T. Y. Danjuma, John Shagaya, Jeremiah Useni, David Mark, etc.—as well as Nigeria’s business (oil) barons like Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga, Femi Otedola, Wale Tinubu, Dantata, Arthur Eze, A.B. C. Ojiakor, Jim Ovia, Alakija, Sunny Odogwu, Tony Elumelu, Emeka Offor, Jimoh Ibrahim, Poster A. Adebayo, etc., all to declare their assets, particularly with respect to their oil block based assets.
With his kind of personal discipline, patriotism, and zero-tolerance on corruption, who else should be that Nigerian to do the job of blocking corruption and enshrining full transparency in the country’s excessively opaque petroleum industry? We should be applauding his readiness to supervise the oil and gas sector given his antecedent and his second-to-none patriotism. Supervising the sector will make the president lead all the urgent transformation, including bringing the badly needed investments, efficiency and productivity currently alien to the sector along with the full overhauling of the corporate architecture of the NNPC and all its subsidiaries.
PIB will be brought back to the drawing board with the goal of fine-tuning it and increasing the local content policy in our oil and gas sector, including altering the old-established system and elimination of inherent corruption and sweetheart deals. All in all, such overwhelming overhauling of the sector would require that at least a total of 117 laws on the books should have to be either repealed or amended; which invariably would mean bringing this old, inhabitable house called NNPC and rebuilding it all over again.