Without the slightest hint of impending changes, President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday carried out a major shake-up in the top echelon of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), with the sack of the Group Managing Director, Mr. Andrew Yakubu as well as the Managing Director of its subsidiary Exploration and Production (E&P) company, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company (NPDC), Mr. Victor Briggs.
Dr. Joseph Thlama Dawha who had served previously as the Group Executive Director, Exploration and Production of NNPC was appointed by Jonathan as the new GMD of NNPC while Briggs who only last March took over from Abiye Membere, will now also make way for Mr. Anthony Ugonna Muoneke as the new Managing Director of NPDC.
A statement from the Special Adviser to President Jonathan on Media and Publicity, Reuben Abati yesterday stated that the appointments and changes in the management of NNPC and NPDC will take immediate effect.
The statement also announced the appointment of Ms. Aisha Mata Abdurrahman as the Group Executive Director (GED), Commercial and Investment of NNPC as well as Dr. Attahir Yusuf as the GED Business Development of the corporation.
The new GMD, Dawha is from Borno State. He had also worked for the corporation as the Managing Director of Integrated Data Services Ltd (IDSL), a subsidiary of the NNPC.
Similarly, Muoneke who is the new Managing Director of the NPDC is from Anambra State. He had recently resigned from the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) where he served as the Executive Director, Finance and Administration.
Muoneke was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1985 and has over 29 year experience at both local and international levels in the oil and gas as well as the energy and power sectors.
The erstwhile GMD, Yakubu was appointed in June 2012 with some new group executive management team. He took over from Oniwon, who retired having attained the mandatory retirement age of 60 in 2011.
Yakubu was the 15th NNPC boss. He is a 1979 graduate of Chemical Engineering from the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria and joined NNPC 34 years ago.
He rose through the ranks to become the Managing Director of Warri Refining and Petrochemicals Company as well as the GED in charge of Exploration and Production. He is an indigene of Kaduna State and a Fellow of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).
Announcing Yakubu’s appointment in 2012, the president through Abati said in the statement that his appointment was “to further strengthen the ongoing reforms and transformation of Nigeria’s petroleum sector, and in furtherance of efforts to achieve greater transparency and accountability in government.”
But under him, the NNPC had gone through series of challenges that threatened its integrity and accountability as a state-owned oil company; one of such was the disagreements between the NNPC and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over alleged unremitted $ 49.8 billion crude oil revenue.
The former Governor of CBN, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi had in a letter to President Jonathan accused the corporation of failing to remit $ 49.8 billion into the federation account from the periods 2012 to 2013. He also questioned the role of NPDC in the number of Strategic Alliance Agreements (SAAs) it signed with private Nigerian oil companies for the development of eight onshore oil blocks in the country.
Sanusi had further stated that the NNPC may have foisted the NPDC as a special purpose vehicle with which it acquired oil assets that belonged to the federation and transferring incomes from the operations of the NPDC into private hands. He thus stated that the operations of NPDC were dubious.
The allegations were however squashed by a joint reconciliatory meeting that involved the ministries of finance, petroleum resources, CBN, Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) and the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) amongst others after it was discovered that about $ 12 billion were unaccounted for but was not missing.
