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Marring Kupolukuns celebration
By
Banji Ojewale,
Head, Covers & Investigation
Last week Funsho
Kupolokun, engineer and group managing director of the leviathan called
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC was set to roll out the drums to
mark his first anniversary in that capacity. But while the rites of ovation
were on, a kill-joy came on the scene in the shape of a Senate Committee.
According to the House
Committee on Petroleum (Upstream) Kupolokun may be dragged to the dreaded precinits
of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, for alleged financial
misdeeds. The Senators say the NNPC boss allegedly collaborated in obtaining
600million dollars in addition to a previous 3.2 billion dollars approved for
joint venture operations.
He and his management
team are also charged with conniving to heap lowly qualified foreigners on the
oil industry. When Kupolokun appeared before the lawmakers to defend himself,
he shied away from lengthy responses to the accusations, promising rather to
present a written statement on the issues highlighted by the committee.
It was an anti-climax. A
sermon of reporters eager to flood the newspapers with a blow-by-blow account
of the encounter left the Senate Chambers with the one-sided report of a Senate
peeved by Kupolokun’s terse assertion that there could be no corruption
in the award of NNPC contracts.
Meanwhile back to the
first anniversary it was time to take stock. The corporation’s publicists
said its activities in the downstream sector have taken a pre-eminent position
in public discourse lately. Levi Ajuonuma, NNPC’s ubiquitous and
fast-talking spokesman speaking on major achievements like efforts to get the
refineries to work said: “Three of the 21 local refining companies
granted licenses to operate have reached engineering stage and are scheduled to
proceed to construction soon.”
Kupolukun on his part
says that at the last count 400 million dollars had been spent on efforts to
rehabilitate the refineries, while another 300 million had gone towards the
repair of other supply and distribution facilities in the downstream sector.
Writing on these claims,
a journalist said: “Indeed investigations show that this has impacted
products supply and distribution around the country, following the availability
of petroleum products in depots in the north, which in the last 12 years had
not received products.”
But critics have
noted-that under Kupolokun in the past 12 months, crude oil theft has
continued. They put the figures at more than 50,000 barrels of crude per day.
There is also fear of a heavy toll on the environment, human lives, and
property arising from these heists.
“There has been
little Nigerians find to cheer about over the first year of the
Kupolokun’s era, “ an oil watcher told Daily Independent. He
said if all the NNPC boss could allude to as achievements is the easy
availability of petroleum products without worrying about their high prices and
the social and economic implication, then he has failed.
Other observers say this
is an unkind verdict. They insist that Kupolokun’s sight is buried in the
near and a future when the gains of his drive for total deregulation of the
sector would be appreciated.
Either way, Funsho Kupolokun hasn’t been allowed to
enjoy the relaxed jollity of an occasion where he would have read out a
mouthful monologue of triumphant trajectory. With a hostile Senate invoking the
fearsome EFCC, and Adams Oshiomhole and civil society warming up for a strike
allegedly on account of NNPC’s policies, Kupolokun could hardly afford
the pleasure of jubililating.
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