Olusegun Obasanjo
A new book has told of how ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo ran the
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) as a “sole administrator”
for the eight years he led the country, TheCable reports.
According to the book titled ‘Too Good to Die: Third Term and the
Myth of the Indispensable Man in Africa’, while serving as minister of
petroleum resources, the former president never discussed activities of
the corporation with government officials until his last days in office.
Obasanjo, who was president from 1999 to 2007, made himself the
minister overseeing the nation’s petroleum sector until January 2007,
when he relinquished that position.
The only official Obasanjo had in a similar capacity was Edmund
Daukoru, his presidential adviser on petroleum and energy, whom he later
made minister of state for petroleum resources in 2005.
In the book, the authors – Chidi Odinkalu, former chairman of the
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), and Ayisha Osori, author of
‘Love Does Not Win Elections’ – said Obasanjo was “ultimately
responsible for all the decisions made affecting the petroleum sector”.
They told of how he secured approval for all his dealings as
petroleum minister in one fell swoop, during one of the last federal
executive council meetings.
The authors wrote: “In one of the last working sessions of
cabinet in May, 2007, Obasanjo required cabinet to give retrospective
approval to all the measures he had taken over the eight years in which
he acted as sole administrator of Nigeria’s oil industry.
“Cabinet duly obliged him after recording Vice-President Atiku Abubakar’s objection.
“For this purpose, each minister received their share of the
documents they were required to approve in a Ghana-must-go bag. None had
the capacity to process or read them. The approval was pro-forma.”
While he served as minister of petroleum resources, NNPC operations
were reportedly shrouded in secrecy with little or no accountability in
place.
Obasanjo was said to have disregarded due process on several
occasions, allegedly bypassing the national assembly on issues of
funding and failing to render proper accounts of oil revenue to relevant
agencies like the Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal
Commission (RMAFC).
Interestingly, while serving as military head of state in 1977,
Obasanjo had set up a tribunal to investigate the operations of the
Nigerian National Oil Company (NNOC, which metamorphosed into NNPC).