Going by the antecedents of newly appointed GMD of NNPC, it looks quite clear that the man knows what he is coming to do and is not likely to disappoint, writes Correspondent, SAM NWOKORO.
Certainly, a behemoth like Nigeria’s oil regulator, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is not a place to test anyone’s ingenuity or ability to perform to the satisfaction of anyone, not even the government that owns it. Some of the eggheads in the country had manned the place in the past three decades since it was set up. About half the number of bosses that had ever piloted NNPC in the past had crashed out in less than auspicious circumstances. The reason for this is quite understandable.
The place called NNPC is one huge nuclear theatre of power intrigues due to the place oil occupies in national affairs, and the delicate economic power politics of the country. So anyone appointed into the position of Group Managing Director (GMD) of NNPC does not actually celebrate it. Reason: although the call to serve in NNPC is a public acknowledgement of the person’s acceptability or integrity, any person running NNPC is expected to literally perform miracles.
For those who may want to know why Dr. Shehu Ladan’s second shot at NNPC is not as such an enviable assignment, as NNPC is globally known as one big theatre of power-play by all manners of competing stakeholders. And they are legion. The multinational oil companies, the politicians, the businessmen, all other interests.
Having commanded and conquered Nigeria’s hydrocarbon industry so early in the life of the nation with their oil technology and wherewithal, the oil companies have become a permanent fixture in Nigeria’s economic calculations, both local and foreign, provided oil is involved.
All these stakeholders and others not mentioned here whose attitudes towards petrol issues in the country all go to show that the job of Ladan, the Ciggarin Zazzau, is not an easy one. But patriots do not shy away from obeying the call to duty, no matter how unpleasant the job. Everybody can shy away from helping in this rebuilding Nigeria project simply because “I don’t want to enter into any crises”. Crises are only catalysts for change, and it takes somebody to drive change.
Thus it can safely be said that the recent appointment of Dr. Ladan last week comes with onerous expectations.
Possible agenda
The last time Dr. Ladan headed NNPC, there were many contending agenda in the file. There has always been. One was around 2004 when the idea of private refineries was mooted by then President Olusegun Obasanjo. Then Ladan was general manager in charge of human resources, a position that is prominent enough in the hierarchy of the organisation. So he knows more about the imperatives of widening the supply chain of refined petroleum products, since the refineries were not performing better. Today, it has become imperative to deregulate the upstream sector of the oil industry. He looks certain to be the one to shoulder whatever remains in that aspect of petroleum industry reform.
Another agenda Ladan would be saddled with this time around would be helping the probe of the corporation as the president has set out to do. He would be helping in letting Nigerians unravel those responsible for our oil theft in the Niger Delta in which Nigeria reportedly loses about $200 billion annually. He would help in unravelling the mysteries behind why many oil companies defaulted in payment of royalties over the years as reported by the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
He would help Nigerians know exactly why the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), a subsidiary of the NNPC, is so opaque in its activities as recently reported by the PriceWaterHouseCoopers that the unit is law to itself, as its budget is hardly regulated. It decides for itself which business to enter into, which field to invest in or divest from, even without the knowledge or approval of the NNPC board or the Ministry of Petroleum Resources. Thus its budget is neither monitored nor censored by neither the presidency nor the parliament. It is reported that Nigeria’s revenue from gas is shortchanged – the product is sold in the international market at virtually give-away price.
Nigerians would also learn during his tenure what appropriate measures that would better guarantee safety of crude pipelines from vandals, one of the reasons given for the low gas supply to electric power plants in the country. Would the same old military fashion of ‘gun and bullet’ be the best strategy at safeguarding what is obviously for now – until other sectors of the economy begin to register positively in Nigeria’s wallet, the only source of certain income? Or would he advise the president to allow the arrangement whereby the former administration of Goodluck Jonathan co-opted locals into pipeline protection, since they know the terrain better than previous security task forces deployed there in the past and who did not solve the problem.
Again, before his tenure runs through, Ladan would be doing more explanations about the still-born Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) which, though it is among the 46 bills the seventh National Assembly (NASS) passed into law in a record 10 mins, still evokes complaints here and there. What about the gas wahala and perennial fuel import logjam?
Nigerians expect that Ladan, given his many years of experience as lawyer and in the NNPC, would not be so easily spooked by the maze of controversial agenda he would be inheriting as probe of that agency commences.
Change agent
It seems that Ladan has keyed into the new paradigm, which everyone is talking about: that only 100 per cent deregulation of the upstream oil sector is the antidote for perennial fuel scarcity in the country. He said this much before his recent re-appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari.
For a man who has traversed the oil and gas sector of the economy since the 1990s, he knows the changes that are desirable. When Jonathan’s government removed him from the position in 2010, while he was outside the country, he did not make much noise about it, though the political detractors of the former president tried to make political capital out of it. The former president felt that he was not dealing with the issue of PIB as expeditiously as he wanted it. But Ladan was taking time to make the bill fool-proof. He confirmed this much recently when he joined issues with the position of the Jonathan government, restating that total deregulation of the upstream sector is the only worthwhile root to ending petrol scarcity.
He had said, while meeting with representatives of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and National Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) in a paper he delivered titled ‘Downstream Petroleum Sector: the Imperatives of deregulation’. “Without mincing words, let me join my predecessor to say that NNPC is hundred per cent in support of deregulation, not just because it would support our business, but because this is the only way that majority of Nigerians will derive fair deal from the abundant petroleum resources in the country. With deregulation, Nigerians will decide their product prices, and operators will be in a position to recover full cost and reasonable margins on their operations,” he had told the stakeholders.
He maintained that only deregulation of the upstream sector will allow refinery licence holders to invest because the present subsidy regime is a disincentive to them. He promised that within his tenure, NNPC would invest more in oil and gas transport infrastructure by committing more than N300 billion into road rehabilitations and acquisition of 25 more train coaches.
Life of service
Dr. Ladan was previously appointed GMD of the NNPC, taking over from Dr. Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo who was there for a year and three months, having been appointed on June 12, 2009.
Born September 21, 1952, he thus, by that appointment, became the 13th GMD of the corporation. He was before then Executive Director (Commercial and Investments) of the corporation, and before this, the Group General Manager (GGM), Human Resources.
He has also worked as Group Executive Director (Corporate Services), Company Secretary/Legal Adviser of the Nigerian Gas Company, and Deputy Managing Director, Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG), as well as an Admin Manager and Personnel, Pipelines and Product Marketing Company (PPMC).
Ladan has also served as Executive Director, Nigerian Engineering and Technical Services Limited (NETCO), all under NNPC.
Outside his forages in the NNPC, he worked as staff solicitor of Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria (FMBN), and also as Secretary/Legal Adviser with Kaduna State Rural Electrification Board in the 1990s. In 1987, he was appointed into Kaduna State Executive Council as Education Commissioner, and subsequently as Attorney-General and Commissioner for Justice in 1989. During his stint as Education Commissioner, he founded and established the Nuhu Bamali Polytechnic, Zaria (formerly Kaduna State Polytechnic) and hold the traditional title of Cigarin Zazzau of Kaduna.