Nigeria: Oil Contractors Want NNPC Boss' Sack

Nigeria: Oil Contractors Want NNPC Boss' Sack

June 5, 2011 - A forum of Oil and Gas Contractors in the South-South geo-political zone, are pressing President Goodluck Jonathan, not to re-appoint the immediate past Petroleum Resources Minister, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke into his “transformation” cabinet. They are also up against the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mr. Austin Oniwon. They want the president to fire him.

A news report by AkanimoReports on Sunday, said the forum is alleging that both Allison-Madueke, and Oniwon, have what they described as “anti-Niger Delta tendencies”. Before President Jonathan sacked his cabinet the previous Monday, the regional contractor bloc and Allison-Madueke, have been at logger heads over the interest of the oil and gas region that has been a hot bed of low intensity war till the amnesty programme came to effect last December.

They accused the former minister of “anti-Niger Delta tendencies” and as such, are opposed to her being included in President Jonathan's next cabinet.

But the obviously angry Group General Manager, Public Affairs Division of the NNPC, Dr. Levy Ajuonuma, said in Abuja, the country's capital city, “it is unacceptable to employ the deliberate use of character assassination to achieve political ambition”.

The NNPC spokesman had earlier claimed that the ex-minister has never been indicted by any political authority in the country including the National Assembly.

According to Ajuonuma, the accusers of the ex-oil minister may be working in concert with some “desperate power grabbers and rent seekers bent on seeking the downfall of the hardworking Minister of Petroleum Resources for their personal gain”.

President of the contractors forum, Deremo Peters, from Bayelsa State and the Secretary, Timi Cap, from Delta State had in a statement to AkanimoReports, accused the ex-minister of working against the interest of the oil region.

“Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke has been undermining the development of the oil-rich Niger Delta region; she is a total failure to the Niger Delta struggle,” the contractors alleged.

According to them, “since she mounted the saddle as oil minister, she has done nothing positive to the development of the Niger Delta. We expected her to develop our forum so that we can as well develop our people.”

Pushing for the sack of the GMD of the NNPC, they said, “Mr Austin Oniwon needs to be fired by President Jonathan because when the former Petroleum Minister, Mrs. Diezani Allison-Madueke was in office, the NNPC boss has been patronizing the foreign companies like the Acergy, OPI and other multinational oil companies to the detriment of Nigerian companies. Since he became the NNPC boss, all big projects in the Oil and Gas industry have been fully directed to these multinational oil companies both offshore and onshore. The fates of the local companies are being threatened in the face of this.”

“We are imploring the President to sack the NNPC boss so that a more intelligent person with the interest of Nigerians at heart is made to handle the Corporation for the dream of Mr President for the Oil and Gas Industry can be realized, the forum said.

Continuing, they alleged, “recently when the former minister left office as a result of the dissolution of the cabinet, we found out from investigation that a lot of games plan are on to retire our South-South brothers and sisters working in NNPC and we dare ask is this because the petroleum minister is no longer in office? Mr. President, we urge you to sack the NNPC boss now before himself and his cartel destroys the Oil Industry and send our brothers and sisters to early retirement.

“Mr. Oniwon has always been a pretender in the presence of the former minister. If the former minister was not intelligent enough and abreast with the oil and gas industry, the NNPC boss would have destroyed the sensitive oil sector long ago for his personal interest and hatred for the South-South people. We are aware that he never knew that President Jonathan will win the April 9, 2011 presidential election because he has been working with General Muhammadu Buhari, believing that Buhari will extend his tenure for four more years if Buhari had won the election and change everything about the South-South people working in NNPC, but as God would have it, our brother, President Jonathan emerged the winner of the last presidential election, they stated”.

ENDS

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