The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)
is set to carry out another round of forensic audits that will run into
2015 accounts, to ascertain its true financial state.
The audit is part of a three pronged approach which
includes pruning the workforce and reworking the business strategy in
the ongoing repositioning of the nation’s oil corporation.
In recovering the country’s stolen funds President Muhammadu Buharimhad turned the search light on the the NNPC.
Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the corporation’s
General Managing Director (GMD) told reporters at the Presidential
Villa, Abuja, that more staff of the NNPC may be laid-off in due course,
as the right personnel must be in key positions.
“At the end of the day, NNPC isn’t a
public service, it is a corporation and it is going to be run like a
company, generating money and profit for Nigerians. So that whole
concept of anything goes is going to stop and this is the first stage in
that whole process.
“It is a three-pronged process that I am following, there
is a people aspect which we are dealing with now, there is a process
after the people at the right places. We are going to get a forensic
audit done so that we know clearly, not the one PW did, but the proper
forensic audit that will cover us all the way to 2014,2015, and we will
be able to say to you this is the state of the economy” he said .
On the restructuring and repositioning of the corporation,
Kachikwu saidmthings that have been done wrongly before will now be
corrected, as a new a culture for accountability and service delivery is
being set up.
He said the whole idea is to go back to
being able to look at the appraisals of staff, “how well you have done
on the job that you have done, and if you have done very well, how do we
elevate you to positions where you can offer more service? If you have
not done well enough and we can retrain you, we will, but if you have
not done well enough and there is no possibility of retraining, we let
you go”.
Processes and control measures will be
put in place for retraining and repositioning of staff. Afterwards, the
corporation will commence working with majors and minors in the oil
sector to take the country forward.
The final stage, will be the business
stage, which will entail looking at all the existing contracts, to
ascertain if they are good or if they need to be redone. Challenges
arising from the reducing balance sheet as a result of the drop in oil
prices, will also be looked at, with the aim of seeking out ways to
energise recovery and income growth, so that the government will have
money to work with.
“It is a very intensive and calibrated
work, but over the next five, six moths you will begin to see a new
emergence in the NNPC, a new process of oil administration in the
country and obviously giving fillip to Mr President’s dream of taking
the oil industry back to where it should be.
“I think that the new NNPC that you are going to see going forward, will be a different institution all together” he said.
On the Presidential directive for the corporation to remit
all funds to the Treasury Single Account (TSA), Kachikwu said the issue
was still being looked at, as the running of the corporation required a
lot of funds.
“All that is being looked at, because to
run an oil company you need a lot of funds to do it, if you don’t ,you
will close down the corporation and the production system will close
down. So we are looking at having merged the need for accountability and
openness with the need to make sure that the industry also survives,
you cannot throw away the baby with the bath water” he added .
Elizabeth Archibong
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