Inauguration day remarks by Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu

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The work in this ministry is going to be intense. There is a lot to be done. Those of you who manage to follow my antecedents at the NNPC, will find that I go at a fairly fast rocket pace. But I do understand that the civil service is also cautions one to be careful, and that is where the permanent secretaries come into play.

She will put the blinders. It is not racing for racing sake, but racing to change the direction. We have lost a lot of momentum in the sector by virtue of the past goings on couple on with the difficulties in the international environment. We now need to begin to sit down and map out very clear deliverables for us. I will imagine that in the first couple of months we will let the MDs of various parastatals work with us to understand what the agenda of this administration is.

But very quickly, we will be able to sit down and see if they have the capacity to deliver those results. I want to put that on the table. I am not saying I am going to change people, but we would absolutely require them to show an ability to deliver the sort of change mantra that we are looking for.

A lot of that is going on in the NNPC and part of the reason I might be straddling on both portfolios for a while is to help finish some of the change process that we are undergoing and then fairly quickly, hopefully at some point in time, hand that over. Which means that one’s responsibility is going to be enormous in terms of size and I am going to be relying on the permanent secretary too, sometimes can hold the forte here when I’m not.

Clearly, this cannot be done by person and the beauty of human associations is that once you get everybody join an inclusive relationship, everybody delivers.

I do not have the magic wand. I might have some good ideas, but those ideas will have to come from all of us and all of us will have to buy into it. One thing is certain, and we can be sure of whichever time I spend here, it is going to be spent with a lot of respect for the dignity of people. I am a very respectful person and I give as much as I expect to have.

So you wouldn’t have anybody treating you with some level of disrespect.
My direction would also be clear. I don’t believe in fringe directions, it will be very clear and very transparent and we will have a clear line of sight in terms of where we are going to.

As far as the president is concern, I think they are very key substantial deliverable. One is that the working environment and the perception about this ministry must change. We are working hard to do that in NNPC and the ministry that have supervisory powers of the NNPC must even do more.

That whole change processes must begin to come from you, you are the leaders and if you do not show this essence of change, in terms of speed, in terms of skill sets and in terms of behaviourial norms, then we are wasting our time, expecting that the junior ones are going to deliver on those.

Secondly is that we have dwindling resources and yet the whole nation depends on this ministry to provide the resources, so we must be able to begin to put on the cap on how do we cut cost? How do we improve on earnings, how do we meet federation account requirements? How do we put controls that are essential to prevent leakages? How do we develop new income streams? How do we develop investments?
So, grow income, cut costs, help the federation stabilize, those are very key. I think that once we take these, we have probably gotten a basic element of where we are headed.

The third is people must be happy where they work. We most times spend most part of our lives in work centers and if we are not happy where we work, no matter how much we are paid, it is not going to make a difference, one is going to be a sad difference and a sad person never delivers good end results.

I like to be able to, hopefully, do what we have done in just three months at the NNPC, which is create an environment where people can come home to work and feel at home. Which means it takes respect, clear line of sight and duties and it also requires working affiliatively, like brothers and sisters.
If you do that, you create an environment where everybody is happy to come to work.Everybody is important in the stream of things and we all have to put hands together take them along and make sure they are comfortable.

Today, I want to begin a change in this place and tomorrow when I come to work, it would be a different ministry.
The basic rules, I like to respect processes and systems.

There are reasons why the civil service processes are in place. I will challenge those processes to change and be fast and not to crawl, but I will not go outside the system. I don’t do that. I also respect hierarchy. The permanent secretary is the most senior civil servant in this room; I will expect her to be respected accordingly because I will also respect her.

It would be a bumpy ride, let us join the race, it is going to be exciting also.
The direction for me and this administration is straightforward; find more oil, find more gas, monetize them, put money in the hands of the government. Every other thing we do is around those and obviously we have to worry about what we do and how we do with environmental issues so that oil producing communities do not feel left behind and their environment destroyed.

That is the simple policy; every other thing we do is hedged around these policies.
On PIB, government believes in PIB still. Government wants to see the PIB come through. However, Government has indicated that there is a need to look at the PIB as was submitted to the sixth assembly and try and tinker with it.

They are all kinds of issues, one of those is whether we need to yank out the fiscal terms and develop them into a different law relying on existing laws or amend those, or whether we do that as a separate component of law. I have having dialogue with the senate, who are moving fairly fast in some analysis of this.

But key is engagement. What made the previous one fail was that a lot of sectors did not feel they were sufficiently engaged. I think that one of the things that the senate is actually is doing is to make us co-own the Bill so that we spent the energy that is required to do the seed work of engagement and amendment so that we all have a Bill that we are all not going to fight about in the national Assembly, but one that have everyone wrap their hands around.

On the current fuel crisis, the money approved by the by the president has not reached physically because there is a process that our constitution requires in terms of approving those sorts of expenditures. They are extra budget, so the president is taking time to write to the assembly to appraise some of the need to do this because when you don’t do this some of them their factories will be closed, their capacity imports are almost zero and their staff has not been paid for some months.

NNPC does not have the singular capacity to import all the products required in this country and those are the clear facts.

So, do we want to pay? Yes, are we providing for the money? Yes, do we need approval from outside the executive to implement this? Yes. It’s going through a process; i do urge them to be a bit patient the president is working very hard to ensure this issue is resolved.

To fuel queues, there is enough fuel supply, as at today we have products both onshore and offshore for a total of about 22 to 23 days so that the absence of product is not the issue. What is the issue is the usual panic buying by Nigerians. Over the weekends the pumps were not working well, as soon as two vehicles queued up every other person passing by just turned around and queued up and they say well NNPC seems to be the only one selling fuel and what is our guarantee we are going to find fuel tomorrow?

There is a lot of panic buying, a number of trucks have been moved around the country over the last three days in excess of 4,000 trucks. The total number of utilisation here is about 2500 trucks, again there are people who are getting into places, get the fuel, store it and they are not opening their shops. The DPR is doing a very good work in terms of getting into those areas and have sealed quite a couple of shops in those areas.

What i can guarantee you is that one of the things we must set up, just like in the oil sector is that you keep a tab of the days you shut down for work and you do not produce oil for whatever reason. We are going to calibrate performance in the basis of lost time, i do not want any day in this country passing in which any citizen of this country does not have the fuel that they need.

The whole of this will depend on how we refine, distribute and what our spontaneous reactions are in terms of emergencies. So i can assure you that the queues we see if they are still there will be out by the end of tomorrow.
We are working round the clock and i am getting almost an hourly brief on this.

Inauguration day remarks by Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, Minister of State for Petroleum Resources (As Transcribed)

Source: Vanguard