The Barkindo I knew

The passing, on Wednesday, July 7, 2022, of Muhammed Sanusi Barkindo who was at the time of his death, the secretary-general of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), robbed the Nigerian and indeed the world oil sector of one of its influential and iconic figures.

This is at a time when the global oil industry is facing great uncertainty with the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine and the moves towards diversification of energy sources by the major industry players. OPEC, which has been playing a key role in the dynamics of the global oil industry since its establishment, could not have had a better steer of its fortunes at these trying times than Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, who is widely regarded as the quintessential insider in the industry.

Barkindo was in the saddle as OPEC secretary-general throughout the period of the COVID-19 pandemic when oil prices virtually collapsed globally and when the Russians invaded Ukraine which again sent the world oil sector into turmoil with severe shortages and rising prices of the commodity.

In both situations, Barkindo had worked to keep OPEC from falling apart by engaging and convincing the major players of the organization like the Gulf oil nations and indeed significant others outside OPEC like Russia not to go on a tangential trajectory of production competition and price wars. Barkindo’s overarching objective in this regard which worked so well in steadying OPEC and the global oil industry through the difficult times of the pandemic and the on-going Russia-Ukraine war was simple: Don’t panic, hunker down, batten down the hatches and we will see this one through as we have done in the past.

This is really the kernel of Barkindo’s OPEC plus plan which is aimed at aligning the organization’s plans and interests with those of other significant non-OPEC players in collectively facing up to the immediate and future challenges of the global oil industry.

Unfortunately, Barkindo, the originator of the plan and its driver, had to answer the call of his maker without fully concretizing it as conceived by him.

I first came into contact with the late Barkindo when he was appointed as deputy managing director of Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas Limited (NLNG). NLNG is a joint venture of four partners namely Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation as it then was, representing the federal government of Nigeria, Shell Gas BV, Total and ENI.

The late Barkindo was deployed from NNPC to NLNG as DMD which made him the highest-ranking Nigerian on the board and by default the boss of the company since NNPC held the single largest shareholding at 49%. He came with a reputation of being an intelligent but no-nonsense oil technocrat who had cut his teeth in the topsy-turvy world of NNPC corporate politics.

Not too long after he took his place at the then headquarters of the company at Sanusi Fafunwa Street in Victoria Island, I was mightily surprised when his secretary asked me up to his office. “Gadu, Oga wants to see you’’, she said crisply into my ear when I picked up her call on my desk phone. And because I did not want to chance the DMD as he was waiting for me, I took the steps up rather than wait for the lift.

To my surprise, I got into his office to meet him not behind his desk but reclining in a settee in shirt sleeves. He waved me to a seat and without any preambles, he said: “Iliyasu, some people have told me about you. They say you are good but stubborn’’. As I sensed he did not expect any response from me on what sounded as a matter-of-fact statement, I kept mum. “People describe me in such terms too, so perhaps we will work together but through your superiors in your division’’. And so set the stage for my working experience with him which would have gone farther had he not been abruptly deployed to OPEC to act as secretary-general on behalf of the then minister of petroleum Rilwanu Lukman.

The first thing that strikes you about the late Barkindo was the energy he exuded. His large eyeballs, to his fixed intense gaze while talking to somebody, to his corpulent frame and calm unperturbed mien spoke of somebody who knew his onions and was not going to be intimidated by anyone. His gravitas was completed by his sartorial elegance and eloquence. His charisma was so self-evident that even if you did not know him beforehand, you could not fail to notice him in a crowd of oil industry types.

One thing that is universally agreed upon in the oil industry was his intimate knowledge and understanding of the oil and gas sector in Nigeria and the world. I once accompanied him to a session at the national assembly and when it was his turn to speak which he did ex tempore, he left the legislators practically wowed at his detailed explanations of the issues at stake.

It was no wonder that he became the first person without a background in science or technology courses to be appointed group managing director of NNPC.

One other thing you could also say about the late Barkindo too was his generosity. There was nobody I knew who worked with him that did not benefit from his open-handedness which was frequent.

A testimony to the late Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo’s positive impact was in the large crowd that turned out to receive his corpse at the Yola airport in his native Adamawa state last Thursday and during his Janaza prayers. My heart is with his family on this sad irreparable loss and may Allah grant him Aljanna Firdaus (Ameen).