NNPC - MILITANTS SCANDAL: ANOTHER JOINT VENTURE CASH CALL PROBLEM

It is very interesting that over the years, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has been bedeviled by all kinds of cash call problems between the organization and its foreign multinational joint venture partners. And now, a new dimension has been added to the corporation’s fleet of cash call issues and that is the ongoing controversy over the newly introduced joint venture funding or rather oiling of the activities of militants and/or criminal gangs by the nation’s apex oil concern.

The plethora of commentaries by Nigerians on the issue especially those from outside the Niger Delta region obviously confirm that majority of our people are not schooled in the happenings in the Niger Delta oil region. There is nothing out of place in working with host communities but the problem with this country is that the gulf between good intention and fraud is so thin that either of them can be interchanged effortlessly. As was aptly captured by a report on the alleged payment of doles by the NNPC to militants to secure the corporation’s pipelines or for access to repair the damaged Chanomi crude oil pipeline in Delta state, “that money was paid is no longer in contention.”  The actual issue now is the correct amount paid out and the proper identification of the recipient (s) of the doles.

Now that we know $6m or $12m was paid to a group in Delta state, whether militants or criminals, can someone ask the Acting Group Managing Director (GMD) of the corporation to produce receipt or any evidence of the payment (s). Who signed for and collected the money on behalf of the militants or criminals? Was this amount paid in cash or through bank transfer, if so which bank and who owns the account? According to a concerned Nigerian, with this controversy, “I think we are getting closer to resolving the issue of criminal gangs masquerading as militant agitators for justice in the Niger Delta.”

The Acting Group Managing Director of NNPC, Abubakar Yar’Adua on Tuesday July 22 2008, affirmed to the House of Representatives Committee investigating the non remittance of revenues into the Federation Account that the NNPC paid $6 million monthly ransom to militants which gave them the lee way to repair the damaged Chanomi Crude Oil Pipeline in Delta state.

His words: “For instance, we paid the militants who are also there in the Chanomi Creek. We negotiated with them and they said we should pay $100 million. But we negotiated with them and came down to $6 million because we were losing $81 million due to the problem of ruptured pipelines in the Chanomi Creek which supplied crude oil to the Kaduna refinery in the North.”

Don’t laugh as I propose this approach: To correctly identify the militant group that received the NNPC dole, it is appropriate to gather all the militant groups- resource control agitators and criminal gangs in Warri stadium and ask for those that received money from the NNPC to hands up and those that did not to hands down! It would surprise the NNPC to observe that even the man that directly received the NNPC dole would look the GMD eye ball-to eyeball with his hands firmly down.

The curious question is: how did the NNPC accounted (retired) such expenditure. Under what heading would the corporation say it spent such huge sum of money? Obviously-under joint venture cash calls but the difference now is that it is a joint venture partnership with militants and/or criminal gangs. Is it not very funny?

Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in a reaction to distance itself from the payment even introduced a more interesting angle to the entire NNPC cash call controversy.

The group alleged that truly money was paid and that the NNPC actually paid more than the $12 million the acting group managing director acknowledged. According to MEND spokesperson, the actual amount the corporation paid to some fronts, who operate as criminal gangs, was N2.9 billion ($25 million) for protection of crude oil pipelines in Delta State.

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“From our knowledge, the NNPC disbursed over $25 million (N2 billion) for the scam, which was shared by the top commanders of the military Joint Task Force, senior government officials in Delta State Governor’s Office, top management staff in the NNPC,” the group alleged.

The question is: How did the group know? Did NNPC approach them first and later looked elsewhere where they could get cheaper bargain on the ‘joint venture’ funding? These are all curious questions that need to be answered.

Interestingly also, barely 24 hours from the disclosure by its boss, the NNPC reverted itself and denied spending the money on militants. The corporation’s management in a press statement said that it was paid for the policing of oil facilities. And the job was given to a “Grassroots Company” after negotiation with the “Host Community.”

Well in all, the NNPC boss, MEND and even the corporation’s group general manager (public affairs) agreed on a common ground that money was paid by the corporation. So it is an established case and a very simple one to solve also.

And to resolve this puzzle of the actual recipient of the NNPC dole, let any person with ‘useful’ information volunteer such evidence to help disclose the identity of those Delta state government officials and/or the fronts; at least they are well known and can be identified since they are not among the masked militant agitators for justice.

The NNPC end is the easiest to handle: just grab the acting GMD; he knows who he gave the militants’ cash call money to deliver for the joint venture operations.

It would have been alright to agree with the notion that paying the militants or rather criminal gangs such huge amount of money was part of the penalty Nigeria has to pay and maybe would continue to pay for not doing what should have been done (address the major development needs of the Niger Delta) before the present state of complete entropy.

However, every concerned Niger Deltan especially from Delta state should be worried because the unfolding drama caused by the NNPC’s cash call revelation, if not managed very well, could return Delta state back to another phase of anarchy, this time between militant groups or rather between militants and criminal gangs similar to the mayhem that almost annihilated Warri sometime ago. The only difference in the present circumstance is that the scope may be wider.

BY: IFEANYI IZEZE
IFEANYI IZEZE, ABUJA (iizeze@yahoo.com