Nigerian minister petitions president over oil deals

By Rafiu Ajakaye

LAGOS, Nigeria (AA) -- Nigeria’s junior petroleum minister Ibe Kachikwu has alleged that the country's state-owned oil corporation awarded contracts valued at $25 billion without following due process, raising questions of transparency.

The contracts were awarded without passing through Kachikwu or the board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), the minister alleged in a memo dated Aug. 30 but leaked to the media late Tuesday.

The contents of the memo have gone viral on social media, deepening public suspicion about the government's fight against corruption and impunity.

Kachikwu also accused NNPC Managing Director Maikanti Baru of undermining the office of the petroleum minister by not submitting NNPC’s activities to oversight by his office in accordance with the law.

“The legal and procedural requirement is that all contracts above $20 million would need to be reviewed and approved by the board of NNPC. Mr. President, in over one year of Mr. Baru’s tenure, no contract has been run through the board,” Kachikwu said in the memo.

“This is despite my diplomatic encouragement to Mr. Baru to do so to avoid wrongfully painting you as a president who does not allow due process to thrive in the NNPC,” he added.

Kachikwu listed the controversial contracts to include “crude term contracts valued at over $10 billion, Direct Supply Direct Purchase contracts valued at over $5 billion, the Ajaokuta-Kaduna-Kano pipeline contract valued at approximately $3 billion, various financing allocation funding contracts with NNPC subsidiaries valued at over $3 billion and various Nigerian Petroleum Development Company production service contracts valued at over $3 billion.”

Kachikwu also accused Maikanti of making job appointments at NNPC without recourse to him or the board and urged President Muhammadu Buhari to halt the trend.

“The effect of the attitude of the (Group Managing Director) and the sidelining of the board is that there is a fear culture in NNPC,” according to him.

“Given the history of malpractice and the public perception of the NNPC as having a history of non-transparency, the NNPC Tenders Board cannot be the final clearance authority for clearance it enters into,” he added.