The new Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has said that he was poised to carry out holistic restructuring of the state-run oil firm, to enable it deliver on its mandates.
Kachikwu, who spoke to State House correspondents in Abuja after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, disclosed further that the ongoing NNPC turn-around maintenance (TAM) would feature reorganisation of management personnel, a forensic audit of the firm’s accounts, and a review of its contracts with oil majors and other industry operators.
According to him, the rejig which has seen most top staffs of the corporation sacked will also affect more workers at the middle and lower rung as the restructuring would be from top to the bottom. “It is an A to Z restructuring. I have done the first three layers, which had to do with the GEDs (Group Executive Directors) and Group General Managers. We are going to have a lot more now – the DGMs (Deputy General Managers) and GMs (General Managers) – as this would take us to the next layer, which is the lower layer.”
He explained further: “The whole idea is to go back to being able to look at the appraisals, how well they have done on the job and if they have done very well, how do we elevate them to positions where they can offer more service. If they have not done well enough, and we can retrain them, we will, but if they have not done well enough and there is no possibility of retraining, we will let them go.
According to him, the NNPC will no longer operate like a public service but a profitable business venture just like its counterparts across the globe. “At the end of the day, NNPC isn’t a public service, it is a corporation and it is going to be run like a company, generating money and profit for Nigerians, so that the whole concept of anything goes is going to stop and this is the first stage in that whole process,” he said.
He disclosed that while the process of “getting the right people in the right places” in NNPC is ongoing as part of the ‘three-pronged approach’ he is using, the second strategy of cleaning up the account of the firm is equally taking place.
“We are going to get a forensic audit done so that we know clearly, not the (limited) one done by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), but a proper forensic audit that will cover us all the way to 2014, 2015, and we will be able to say to you this is the state of the corporation and the economy.”
Continuing, he said: “We are going to put processes and controls in place; we are going to do retraining and repositioning and then we are going to engage our (oil) majors and minors, all those who are active in the sector for us to work as a team trying to take Nigeria forward.
“The final stage will be the business stage, looking at all the existing contracts — are they good? Are they ok? Do they need to be redone? Look at the PSCs (Production Sharing Contracts) and what do we do going forward? Look at the challenges posed by the reducing balancing sheet as a result of $50 or $40 per barrel for dark oil. What do we do to energise recovery and the income growth so that the government will have money to work with?
Kachikwu promised to correct the mistakes of his predecessors and lead his team towards repositioning, re-strategising and getting the right personnel in key places, and setting a culture for accountability and service delivery. “It is a very intensive and calibrated work. A lot of us are not spending time sleeping, but over the next five to six months you will begin to see a new emergence in the NNPC, a new process of oil administration in the country and obviously giving fillip to Mr. President’s dream of taking the oil industry back to where it should be…I think that the new NNPC that you are going to see going forward will be a different institution all together,” he said.
By Olisemeka Obeche
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