…As Senate Begins Baru’s Probe
By ‘Dotun Akintomide
The Group Managing Director, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Maikanti Baru has on Wednesday declined comments on the letter written against him to President Muhammadu Buhari by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu.
Baru, who was in Ibadan for official commissioning of some facilities at the Apata, Ibadan depot of NNPC, had paid a courtesy call on Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State.
Curious Governor’s Office correspondents had ambushed the NNPC boss on his way out, and were about to start asking him questions, when Ndu Ughamadu, Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division, instructed that they should limit their questions to the event Baru came to commission in the state.
However, after firing two questions at the NNPC boss on his mission to Ibadan, one of the curious reporters asked Baru about his reaction to Kachukwu’s letter to President Buhari.
Hardly had the reporter started asking the question when Ughamadu cut him short, saying, “Your questions must be restricted to why we are here.”
Baru said when he came on board as NNPC boss in July, 2016, his promise was that all infrastructures for distribution of petroleum products across the country would be made available and working.
However, the Senate on Wednesday set up an ad-hoc committee to look into the issues and other cases of alleged monumental corruption and lack of transparency in the operations of the NNPC.
The probe is to affect the operation of the NNPC in the last 10 years.
But the committee is to specifically investigate the alleged award of $25 billion contract by Baru without due process as stated in a letter by Kachikwu to President Muhammadu Buhari.
Meanwhile, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has been asked to step in immediately and commence in-depth investigation into the allegations leveled against Maikanti Baru.
Eze Onyekpere, Lead Director of Center for Social Justice (CSJ) made the call in statement, in Abuja, while reacting to the allegations.
Onyekpere, who expressed regrets said the allegations are so weighty to be ignored, as they constitute serious crimes against Nigerians people. And given the anti-corruption posturing of the present administration, he maintained that EFCC should step in and do the needful.
CSJ recalls that officers of the previous federal administration who managed the oil sector are facing investigations and trials for offences related to the stealing of Nigeria’s resources.
Onyekpere listed a summary of allegations as revealed by Ibe Kachikwu to include the award of $10 billion crude term contracts; $5 billion direct sales direct purchase contracts; $3 billion AKK pipeline contract; financing allocation funding contracts worth $3 billion and NPDC production service contract of $4 billion.
The statement read in part: “In all, these contracts worth $25 billion were awarded in breach of legal and procurement requirements and the NNPC board was never involved. Again, key management positions were filled without the input of the NNPC board.”
“If the legal and procedural requirement is that all contracts above $20 million would need to be reviewed and approved by the board of NNPC and in over one year of Mr. Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the board,” then the procedure is fundamentally flawed.
“These allegations are weighty and if they are true, constitute serious crimes and acts of economic sabotage against the Nigerian people and the economy. It would not be difficult to establish if NNPC has held board meetings since Dr. Maikanti Baru’s tenure and if meetings have been so held, the agenda of such meetings.
“Therefore, President Muhammadu Buhari should rise to the occasion, in the national interest and ensure that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission moves expeditiously to investigate these weighty allegations; consider suspending the alleged official(s) from office to avoid tampering with evidence and sabotaging investigations.”
