More heads will roll in NNPC, says Kachikwu

Emmanuel Kachikwu, group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), says the shakeup in the corporation is far from over.

Addressing state house correspondents after meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari on Thursday, Kachikwu said: “things have been done wrongly and things need to be done differently”.

He said the restructuring would not be restricted to the top management staff of the corporation, saying the newly-appointed directors will extend it to the lower layers.

“The restructuring will be from A to Z. I have done the first three layers which is going to the GEDs to GGMs and general managers,” he said.

“You are going to have a lot more now. The GEDs and GGMs will take it to the next layer which is the lower layer.

“And the whole idea is to go back to being able to look at your appraisals; how well have you done in the job and if you’ve done very well, how do we elevate you to a position where you can offer more service.

“If you’ve not done well enough, we can retrain you and if you’ve not done well enough and there is no possibility of retraining you, we will let you go.

“At the end of the day, NNPC isn’t public service. It’s a corporation and we run like a company generating money for the people of Nigeria. And so, that whole concept of anything goes should stop. And this is the first stage of that whole process.”

Kachikwu spoke on his plan for the national oil firm, disclosing that a forensic audit of  the corporation since 2014 will be carried out under his watch.

“It’s a three-pronged process that I am pursuing. There’s a people aspect which we are dealing with now; there is a process aspect; after the people at the right places, you are going to get forensic audit done so that we know clearly, proper forensic audit that will cover us all the way to 2014, 2015, that will be able to say to you, this is the state of the company,” he said.

“We are going to put processes and control in place, we are going to do retraining and repositioning and then, we are going to re-engage our majors and minors, all those who are active in the sector, for us to work as a team to try to take Nigeria forward. It is going to be the process stage.

“The final stage will be the business stage, which is now looking at all the existing contracts; are they good, are they ok, do they need to be re-kitted and redone?”