Mele Kyari and Senator David Umahi are two public officers occupying two critical sectors of the nation’s economy under the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Incidentally, the two are engineers. While Kyari oversees the behemoth national oil conglomerate, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPCL), Umahi, a former governor of Ebonyi State, is the Minister of Works, who has a duty to build the nation’s road infrastructure and keep them in decent state all year round.
In recent months, the two appointees have been responsible for some emerging governance models that are of interest and concern to Nigerians at the same time. While Kyari’s model amounts to the projection of a form of dissonance with good governance, Umahi appears to be showcasing tenacity at the workplace. I will not leave you in doubt, and a few examples would do.
On March 14, 2024, Mele Kyari, the Chief Executive of NNPCL, told the Senate of the Federal Republic that the Port Harcourt refinery, which has undergone myriads of Turn-Around Maintenance(TAMs) since the late General Sani Abacha days at Aso Rock, would bounce back to life in two weeks.
A statement by the spokesman of NNPCL after the session quoted Kyari as saying: “We will make sure that promises that we made about the rehabilitation of these refineries are kept. We completed the mechanical completion of PHRC in December.
“Now, we have crude oil already stocked in it. It is currently undergoing a regulatory compliance test before we restream it. I assure you that this refinery will start in the next two weeks.”
He also spoke about Warri and Kaduna refineries and declared that while mechanical work for Warri has been done, Kaduna would be ready by December 2024. He said that the Port Harcourt refinery has received 450,000 barrels of crude for processing, adding that “we are all serving this country dutifully and loyally. Nigerians must understand that gradually, we shall get this task done.”
As I write this on May 3, 2024, exactly one month and a few days after the deadline, freely provided by Mr. Kyari, the nation is suffering a suffocating fuel scarcity that has brought life to a standstill, and the Port Harcourt refinery is nowhere near completion. Several promises made by Kyari have turned out a fluke since he was foisted at the helm of the corporation by President Muhammadu Buhari. One of the funniest promises that usually emanates from the NNPC each time Kyari and his colleagues at the NNPC decide to dry up the supply tanks is the claim by the corporation that it has a supply that would last a month and sometimes 60 days, yet the filling stations would see no drop of petrol for weeks. Black marketers would continuously visit doom on the poor citizens, even as deaths and misery would also feast on many.
On Thursday, April 25, the NNPCL issued one of those eerie statements, and I knew danger was lurking. It was claimed in a statement by its chief corporate communications officer, Olufemi. Soneye, that there was a “tightness in the supply of petrol” in some parts of the country and that the so-called “tightness” has been resolved. That is the genesis of the scarcity Nigerians are currently battling, which has seen many sleep at filling stations for days.
These days, the relationship between Nigerians and the NNPC has gone so sour that if the corporation issued a statement, reassuring the people of the availability of fuel, and canvassing against panic buying, thousands would just pack their jerrycans in readiness to sleep at filling stations, because they know the said assurance was only alerting them to a longer period of crisis. So if the NNPCL says good morning, you first need to look through the window before answering the greeting.
It appears to me that the corporation has delighted in taking the people for much of a ride under Kyari. At a stage it claimed we were consuming 70 million litres of petrol per day, it scaled down to 60 million and then 40 million. Nigerians never quarreled with those figures. What they wanted was the availability of the product. That, however, looks infeasible with the dissonance model of Mallam Kyari. Or what do you say to his allocation of 450,000 barrels of crude to the sleeping Port Harcourt refinery, while the Dangote refinery was sourcing crude from the United States?
In a recent interview, writer and public affairs commentator Akin Osuntokun said Kyari has questions to answer as regards the subsidy regime of the Buhari era, which frittered away billions if not trillions of Naira. “I don’t know the power politics that retained him and does not make any sense to me. I cannot see how you reconcile the public interest in somebody who has paralysed the Nigerian economy,” Osuntokun had said.
Compare Kyari’s service delivery model to that of Senator David Umahi, minister of Works, and you will marvel at the wide gap. If you are to rate Umahi’s service record solely with the speed at which he has commenced the Lagos-Calabar Coastal road, you will think he is not one of the public officers burdened by the usual bureaucratic bottlenecks. Yes, the president is interested in delivering the road, but Umahi has ensured the wishes of the president are executed in practical terms. Immediately the approval for the road was granted, Umahi took it with the seriousness it rightly or wrongly deserves (as there are persons who believe the road should not be a priority). He left no one in doubt that he wanted results, and right now, the government has started paying compensation to affected property owners. He did not stay back in Abuja to cause the issuance of some oblivious statements, while the project drags.
Much as one would commend Umahi for the tenacity he has deployed in the execution of the coastal road, one will also alert him on the need to exercise such dedication in handling some other projects of the Federal Government. The Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, kickstarted by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 is yet to be completed, same as the Ibadan/Oyo/Ogbomoso/Ilorin road started in 2001. Right now, phase one of that road, including Ibadan/Oyo and Ogbomoso/Ilorin, is already due for rehabilitation, even though the contractor has yet to deliver the final lap of the original project. There are many other road projects that are almost practically abandoned across the six geopolitical zones of the country. The Minister of Works should show the same type of zeal and dedication to their execution.
The opinion was first published in The LYNX EYE column by Sunday Tribune, May 5, 2024
