| NNPC GMD DR. EMMANUEL IBE KACHIKWU |
The office of the Group Managing Director
(GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is set to be
crapped, Peoples Daily can authoritatively report.
A top source who gave the indication said
the scrapping of the NNPC GMD office which will take effect as the New
Year opens is part of ongoing measures to unbundle the corporation to
make its operations more effective and result oriented.
The competent source said functions of the
office of the GMD will accordingly be handed over to the Minister of
State for Petroleum, Engr Ibe Kachikwu who in turn reports to President
Muhammadu Buhari who doubles as the Petroleum Minister.
Prior to his appointment as Minister of
State, Dr Kachikwu was the Group Managing Director of the NNPC,
appointed by President Buhari.
Until his appointment, Dr. Kachikwu was the Executive Vice Chairman and General Counsel of Exxon Mobil (Africa).
Dr. Kachikwu is a First Class Graduate of
Law from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and the Nigerian Law School.
He also holds Masters and Doctorate Degrees in Law from the Harvard Law
School.
He started his working career with the
Nigerian/American Merchant Bank before moving on to Texaco Nigeria
Limited from where he joined Exxon-Mobil.
Kachikwu has already been mandated to execute the unbundling process to prepare the ground for the scrapping, the source said.
The government of President Muhammadu
Buhari has repeatedly insisted on need to cut down the cost of
governance to eliminate waste and achieve speedy service delivery.
It would be recalled that former President Goodluck Jonathan created a new office of Deputy Group Managing Director of the NNPC.
The then special adviser to the President
on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati, who announced the new office named
the appointment of Bernard Otti, the then Group Executive Director
(Finance and Accounts) as the new occupier of the office.
Under Jonathan’s arrangement, Otti,
combined his role as Deputy Group Managing Director with his
responsibility as Group Executive Director, Finance and Accounts, of the
corporation.
The creation of the new office was a
departure from the usual structure of the executive management of the
NNPC, which usually have a group managing director at the top of the
pyramid, with groups executive directors in charge of the eight
directorates of the corporation.
The eight directorates included those for
Exploration & Production; Refineries & Petrochemical;
Engineering and Technical; Gas & Powe; Commercial & Investment;
Corporate Services; Finance & Accounts and Business Development.
According to Abati, the creation of the new
office was in furtherance of efforts by the Federal Government under
Jonathan to transform the NNPC into a commercially-driven entity.
He said the new office of Deputy GMD was
expected to help strengthen the corporate governance structure of the
NNPC as well as help ensure value for money and returns on investment
increasingly become key factors in all operational decisions.
Peoples Daily had reported that the Federal
Government was set to carry out the final phase of the restructuring of
the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC.
The restructuring would result in the
Corporation being unbundled into four components, while about 1,100 of
its staff in Headquarters would be eased out.
Minister of State for Petroleum Resources,
Mr. Ibe Kachikwuwith Kachikwu, who doubles as the Group Managing
Director of the NNPC stated this while speaking at a town hall meeting
in Abuja.
He said that he had received President Muhammadu Buhari’s approval to begin the final phase of the restructuring of the NNPC.
” The unbundling process would see the NNPC
broken down into four key components, namely: the upstream company,
downstream company, the midstream company, which is gas and power
marketing, and the refining group holding company” , Kachikwu said.
According to the minister, a major aspect
of the restructuring plan would be in making the Headquarter operations
cost effective by reducing over half of the present 2,200 Headquarter
staff and re-assigning them to subsidiaries with a view to making them
more effective.
However, in at press briefing later same day, Kachikwu denied saying 1, 100 staff of the NNPC would be sacked.
Kachikwu also said that the Federal
Government is considering and developing new models of financing for the
oil and gas industry because it no longer has the resources to fund the
sector.
“The country does not have the sort of
resources to continue to fund the oil industry. As we go upstream, we
are going to begin to see a lot of innovative financing mechanism to
provide funding for the oil industry.”
On the country’s refineries, the minister
said the final decision on the fate of the refineries would likely
emerge in January 2016. Adding that, this would be followed by the
adoption of a price modulation mechanism that would see the Federal
Government setting a price ceiling of between N87 and N97 per litre for
petrol.
COURTESY - The Peoples Daily
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