FEATURE ARTICLE

Babs AjayiFriday, July 31, 2015
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Gatineau, Quebec, Canada

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WHERE ARE THE SOILED MEGAPHONES OF THE NNPC?

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hat is going on at the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) these days? The state-owned corporation is being shoved in the mud from right, left and centre and no one in the noise-making department of the agency is saying anything? Have they lost their voice? The silence at the Corporate Affairs Department of NNPC is so deafeningly too loud. Where are the rabies-infested attack dogs at the NNPC? Whatever happened to the errand boys with big mouths who for years defended the very obvious and ended up looking stupid, yet persisted in their errand to deceive, insult, abuse and intimidate the representatives of the people, journalists, editors, media houses, and the general public? Even after the firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) outlined several discrepancies in the account of the firm in a forensic audit that covered just 18 months, the over-boiled and belaboured megaphones at NNPC rewrote the PWC report to suite their madam and management. By the way, where is the madam today? The above-the-law, do-as-you-please leader of the oil looting pack of the Jonathan kleptocracy is yet to defend herself of any of the very serious and criminal allegations levied against her at home and abroad by President Buhari. Buhari had said that she presided over the stealing of more than one million barrels of crude oil a day and did so up till the very last days of the kleptocracy of Goodluck Jonathan.

These are very serious allegations and no one will expect a very visible, heavily defence-minded NNPC to keep quiet on such matters. Where are the megaphones of NNPC, the same who stood up to attack the then governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Lamido Sanusi, now Emir of Kano and everyone who tried to point things out about the mismanagement of the Corporation? When Sanusi went public with the allegation the cabal of looters decided to sack him to cover their track, and they replaced him with someone they can trust from one of the banks aligned to their interests. The unreconciled amount noted in the PWC report was not remitted by NNPC as at May 2015. NNPC and its Crude Oil Madam were simply above the law then and did as they pleased; deft at justifying any and everything - that was until Buhari defeated Jonathan and the game came to an abrupt end for the kleptocrats and their co-travelers.

Where is Ohi Alegbe, the General Manager of Corporate Affairs (and disinformation?), and the purveyors of misinformation, lies and Janjaweed of all that is ignoble and dubious? Where is Omar Farouk Ibrahim, the one who spent precious time denying the use of aircraft by the then petroleum minister? Where is Tumini Green, the man who denied any sharp practices in crude oil sales in November 2013? Will Mr. Green tell the nation something different today? Is Mr. Green sorry for deliberately misleading the nation and the Nigerian people? It is only in Nigeria that people who are not worthy of leading dogs to the park are appointed ministers and executives to manage the affairs of men and resources. Even the website of NNPC is down and no longer available! The days of lies and frauds are coming to an end. It is not only those who stole crude oil who are corrupt and unworthy; even those who covered up for them and those who facilitated their theft are culpable - they are all criminals and should all be brought to book. The spin doctors at NNPC are suddenly without voice. As feisty as ever - in the chop-and-quench days of no luck, the era of Jonathan - the Corporate Affairs Department of NNPC is either refuting news items, clarifying reports, rejecting claims, denying sharp practices in crude oil sales, picking holes in reports, setting the record straight, castigating reporters, joining issues with editors and the National Assembly, or out-rightly blasting the media and anyone else in its path. It was a time of massive media frauds and frenzy.

The Corporate Affairs Department of NNPC is one department that require an immediate cleanout. The people there never worked for the Nigerian people, unlike the days of Ogbuefi Alex Nwokedi. The men and women at the Corporate Affairs were mercenaries who were determined to eat and were ready to continue doing so even as the Corporation fell apart. What a pity that Levi Ajuonuma is no more. The consummate defender of the obvious, Ajuonuma made light work of denying the very obvious. He was that gifted at it and he was the master of rebuttal and provider of no useful information. It was never his job to provide the facts, but to prevent the facts and truth from getting out. For him it was better to bottle up the facts and keep the truth hidden away in order to protect his masters. Vehemently denying reports was often the master stroke Levi Ajuonuma brought to NNPC. When the House of Representatives' Committee on subsidy regime management that probed fuel subsidy raised the allegation that NNPC mismanaged the sum of N1.067 trillion, Levi Ajuonuma was at his best denying that NNPC made simultaneous withdrawals from two different sources to recover the subsidy claims. Ajuonuma labelled the report as "totally unfounded and absurd," and he accused the Committee of a mindset of "maligning and damaging the reputation of the Corporation as well as other key players of the industry"! Where is the reputation of NNPC today? The brash, motor park approach to media and public affairs only helped to expose the failings of NNPC. Did the Corporate Affairs Department of NNPC not knowingly, deliberately, criminally and callously collude to cover up wanton crimes committed by the executives of the Corporation? The hugely corrupt state-owned oil Corporation has no reputation whatsoever and its senior staff members are equally liable for the disrepute it has fallen into.

This was the Corporate Affairs approach Ajuonuma championed at NNPC. He led a team that fought the Nigerian people, scorn the media and loathe those who stood up to them - even shot the door on the few newspapers who dared to challenge the misinformation they were being provided and ensured that no advert was placed in those 'obdurate' newspapers. It was a new style to corporate bullying and enforcement. The Corporate Affairs department was a microcosm of the rot at NNPC. That department stinks and should no longer exist in the form in which it is at the moment and most of the top managers in that unit should be removed and brought to justice for recklessly misleading the nation and deliberately misinforming the National Assembly and deceiving the Nigerian people while looting took place right under their noses.

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