IF a war foretold does not take the
cripple by surprise, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe
Kachikwu, is
in a situation worse than physical handicap. He’s a victim of his
own naivety but his appointer could be in a bigger dilemma.
The warning shot was fired one year
ago when Kachikwu was removed as Group Managing Director and kicked upstairs as
junior minister. He was cosseted in a nice office, given plenty of room to
travel and such other pleasures that deaden any sense of danger.
Maybe he didn’t want to rock the
boat. Or perhaps he thought that with time, everything was going to be all
right. But how wrong his optimism – or innocence – has turned out to be! As
GMD, Kachikwu had sidelined Maikanti Baru, the highest-ranking insider and
quintessential corporate vulture, that patient bird.
If Baru’s appointment as Kachikwu’s
successor didn’t send a message to the latter that he was on borrowed time, the
far-reaching changes that Baru made within a few months of his dramatic
appointment should have made clear where the new man was going to bury the
hatchet: in Kachikwu’s back. Now, the junior minister has no one but himself to
blame for the embarrassingly difficult situation in which he has found himself.
Smell of funeral His leaked memo is dead on arrival and any commentary on it,
including this one, is only a funeral. I’ll explain why.
No serious government – and
Muhammadu Buhari’s may not look it but there are insiders who still man the
post – will allow a memo to the President to pass without taking care of the
most potentially damaging aspects of such a correspondence before it reaches
him or the public. It’s more so when the two fighting owe their jobs to the
central figures in this memo – one named and the other unnamed. In the over one
month that it took the memo to leak, there’ll hardly be enough bang left to
nail the matter the way Kachikwu had planned it.
To worsen matters, The Cable
reported on Wednesday that Kachikwu submitted the memo to the president, after
it was leaked – compounding the misery and embarrassment of the junior
minister. But no matter, it can’t get worse – a funeral is a funeral. In an
article, entitled,“Who is in charge of NNPC?”, after Baru made major changes
last November, I wrote, “The way things stand today, the man (Kachikwu) is just
a piece of furniture. He’s not in charge.
“If Kachikwu still has any
illusions, the unilateral appointments made this week by the GMD, Maikanti
Baru, should settle the matter. Baru reversed virtually all the appointments
made by Kachikwu six months ago and left his boss to find out what had happened
in his backyard from newspapers.” The junior minister’s leaked memo to Buhari
complained bitterly about pretty much the same thing. But it went further.
Kachikwu claimed, among other things, that apart from sidelining the Board in
decisions about key appointments, contracts valued at nearly$25 billion had
been awarded by Baru without reference to him or the approval of the Board.
Baru replied that under the law, the Board is just, well, a board.
He said the costs that Kachikwu
assigned to some of the contracts were arbitrary and that wherever approvals
were required, due process was followed and all such approvals obtained either
through the Tenders Board, the President or the Federal Executive Council.
Kachikwu’s memo suggested he didn’t know that the Board had no role to play in
contract awards. Or perhaps he conveniently forgot what the rules were in an
office that he occupied for 10 months, during which he infamously said the NNPC
was not a public institution. Yet, Baru’s reply raised more questions than
answers. Who prepared the council papers on the basis of which the contracts in
question were either being considered or have been approved? Was Kachikwu
present in any or all of the FEC meetings at which the contracts were discussed
and did he receive any of the council papers as customary? More questions than
answers Baru’s reply also put Buhari on the spot.
From a Premium Times report on
Wednesday, if we are to believe Baru, Buhari signed off two contracts valued at
about N640 billion ($1 billion and$780 million) – on July 10 and 31, 2016 –
when he was supposed to be away in London on medical leave and after he had
delegated powers to the Vice President. That’s ridiculous. Those trying to
fudge the issue will have to do better than tell the public that the NNPC Board
is not involved in contract awards. They’ll have to do better than say due
process has been followed and then rush to turn the page. They’ll certainly
have to do a whole lot better than making Kachikwu look helpless, incompetent
and foolish. Or, even worse, complicit.
The public needs to know the truth
about how – and if – Buhari indeed signed off a N640 billion contract on his
sick bed when he wasn’t supposed to do so. Interestingly, neither Kachikwu nor
the NNPC named the companies that won the crude term contract valued at
$10billion or the AKK pipeline contract, valued at $3billion, leading to
sinister insinuations about Presidency-level links. Not golden silence Buhari
can’t be silent. He has been silent on the outcome of the probe of$43 million
found in a private residence in Ikoyi and the scandal involving former SGF,
Babachir Lawal; silent on the civil war in his cabinet that is threatening his
anti-corruption war; and silent on two court orders that he should publish the
names of treasury looters and the sums recovered. Silence on the NNPC can only
make Buhari look increasingly not just like a member of the odious crowd
troubling Nigeria, but more tellingly like its mastermind.
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