SAM OHUABUNWA'S PARADIGM

The other day I heard the NNPC Group Managing Director, lamenting that the image of NNPC was being tainted so much by constant accusations and negative press,that the group was losing credibility in the International Market and this was affecting their ability to attract foreign investments to the oil and gas industry where NNPC is the face of Nigeria. This got me thinking and I felt empathy for him and the organisation he leads. When the National oil company was just called National Oil Company( NOC),it was a small organisation that Nigerians respected. Then we expanded its scope and mandate and changed its name to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation(NNPC). It holds Nigeria's equity in all the joint ventures with International Oil companies(IOC), it has it's own independent upstream operations, it is the sole participant in the midstream refining and piping operations and it is involved in the downstream operations of importing refined petroleum products and distributing t...

  The first Challenge the new CBN governor has is to reframe the autonomy of the bank within the context of being an institution of the Federal government and indeed part of the Executive arm of the government. From the look of things, the outgoing governor expanded the autonomy of the bank beyond reasonable contemplation. He tended to act as  a parallel government authority that was not accountable to the President and indeed seemed to be in competition with the President. This led him to rebut any attempt to make him accountable and he seemed to carry on as the lord of manor with the unquestionable power and discretion.   Second, is that he also must uphold the conservative nature of Bankers and especially  that of a Central Bank governor. He must know when to speak and when to be quiet. He must not reveal all he knows and comment on every subject in the media. He must not overheat the system with off- cuff comments.He must restore the dignity of the central bank g...

  For nearly two weeks now, the fate of 239 passengers on the Malaysian Airline flight 307 travelling from Kuala Lumpur( Malaysia) to Beijing (China) has remained a painful conjecture. What is certain is that the plane departed Kuala Lumpur about midnight and travelled to the edge of Malaysian air space about 1.30am, said good bye to the Air traffic Controllers (ATCs)in Malaysia. Just when they were being expected to receive welcome from the Vietnamese Air traffic controllers, the plane went silent, transponders switched off or cut off or malfunctioned and the plane disappeared into 'thin air' or ' deep sea'. In short the plane just vanished!    What happened? Thirteen days after, what we have are all conjectures, theories and guesses. After 4 days of bewilderment by Malaysian Airlines and the Malaysian government, the anxious families of the passengers and the watching world were told that the plane had turned back full circle, flew past the Malaysian te...

In the last week, fuel queues returned to a number of Nigeria's major cities including Lagos, Abuja, Owerri and PORTHARCOURT ,cities which I traversed last week. I personally spent hours in a filling Station in PH on my way to Kwale last weekend, forcing me to arrive late to the event I was attending in Delta State. And on top of that,I paid the market determined 'deregulated price'. Of course,that was not my real concern, I just wanted to get to my destination on time. And which I did not, even after paying above 'recommended' price and haggling and begging at the only filling station selling fuel,as many around were closed. Thursday this week, I missed my flight to Owerri, because the road to the domestic airport in Lagos was blocked. By who? you may ask. By Lagos drivers queuing and struggling to buy fuel! Truly, I have been through this scenario very many times in my life that I can not even begin to count,though the frequency has been largely reduced in the...

After 27 years of military rule, Nigerians are very used to military way of doing things and indeed, without knowing it they have become uncomfortable with civilian way of doing things. They love" with immediate effect" and the drama that accompanies such military actions. Matters have not been helped by the 8 years military style civilian rule of President Obasanjo, who can eat pounded yam with you at lunch and you hear that you have been removed from office at 9 o'clock news on NTA. Oh Nigerians love the tough guy image! That's why they thought that Umaru Musa Yardua was as slow as a snail and they have been so critical of Dr Goodluck Jonathan's speed of action.They have little patience with the long and due process of civilian democracy. They are uncomfortable with the niceties and humane conduct of the president. How can a minister be in position for three years? That does not happen here. The shorter the term, the better, perhaps so that it could get to ...

This Country of ours is very intriguing. And many times I get thoroughly confounded by our double speak. It is becoming clearer to me why things which are simple and straight forward, or should be so end up becoming complex and convoluted in our Nation. Somehow,every issue or matter has to be viewed from narrow ethnic, religious or political prisms and then emerges in different colours. So,some thing which ordinarily looks white may end up being described as grey or colourless,not because of any physiological or pathological malfunctioning of the eyes of the viewers but largely because of their ethnic or political bias. When the Boko Haram group came unto national consciousness with their weekly raiding of worship centres in the North East of Nigeria, some people said nothing, they did not condemn their activities,because the trouble did not affect their own worship centres and those killed came from a different region of the Country. They bombed the UN Plaza and Police HQ in Abuja ...

The report of the Steering Committee for the 2014 National Conference has been largely accepted by the Federal Government. We now know that the conference will happen in the second quarter and will last three months. The number of delegates and how they will be selected or appointed have also been indicated by the federal government. This aspect seems to have attracted a lot of interest and comments. Also the federal government has made a budgetary provision of 7 billion naira ( up from the 1 billion naira provided for the 2005 Political Reform conference). That also has been criticised by many as being wasteful, but that is hoping that the National Assembly would approve the budget in full( unlike the situation in 2005 when the National Assembly refused to appropriate funds, forcing Obasanjo to make extra-budgetary provision). Of a truth, 7 billion is much money especially in Today's Nigeria where our capital expenditure is so paltry at 26% of the entire National budget, wh...

This week, INEC released the time table for Election 2015( including that for Ekiti and Osun States's gubernatorial elections holding this year).Nigerians,especially the Politicians have been expecting this time table to help them structure their own programmes and activities. This effectively signals the 'official' beginning of the campaigns,irrespective of what INEC would want or say. Indeed for some, the campaign started since 2012. When a man announces that he wants to run for any position, that to my mind is the beginning of campaigns. Winning National elections is a long process, involving many steps and many 'mini elections'. A man who wants to run for the office of a state governor for a example,will need a minimum of two years to run his campaign. He will need to convince his family, close friends and associates by telling them why he wants to run. He will then go from one party leader to another in his constituency selling himself and getting suppo...

Since the 1st of January 2014, Nigeria has been celebrating the 100 years of the founding of Nigeria as a Nation. Though the celebrations have been kind of subdued, overshadowed by the political drama of defections and realignments, a series of events have been held as part of the elaborate commemoration of the amalgamation of the Northern and Southern protectorates. Indeed the events started since last year with the SGF on the driving seat. It must be acknowledged that the centenary celebrations are in a way different from the usual. The usual fanfare that characterises our National events seems to be subdued in planning and execution. We are told that not much of Government's money is involved in the celebrations, that most of the events are sponsored by the Private sector. Perhaps, the greatest innovation is the idea of a Centenary City. This 21st Century city to be built around Abuja will equal or surpass Dubai and it will be driven by artificial intelligence, offering br...

During the week I was confused, then depressed and then elated thankfully.This changing moods of mine were caused by the three key Public officers listed above. First was the coordinating minister for the economy and the minister of finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala who made a brilliant presentation of the details of the 2014 budget proposals, but ended up confusing me. She tried to explain or will I say justify the fact that Recurrent expenditure will consume 74% of the National Budget( the highest ever to my knowledge), leaving a paltry 26% or so for Capital expenditure. For me,this is a touchy issue and on which I have spoken about on many occasions and in many fora.In my book- Nigeria @50: Time for the evolution of a New Nation published in 2010, I drew copious attention to this phenomenon and its debilitating effect on national development and made several suggestions on how to tame this tiger that is consuming all the new borns and leaving the land ' infantile'.At our de...

After the Christmas and New Year festivities, many business owners have returned to base to face the uncertainties of the new year. For many, 2013 was a tough year, and most therefore will wish that 2014 will be a much better year. Entrepreneurial success any where is affected by what I call Extrinsic and Intrinsic factors. The extrinsic factors determine what we generally call the operating environment . And these factors are largely created by the governments at the three tiers of Government, with the federal government being the major contributor to determining these factors. Usually these policies, programs and projects are captured through the annual budgets, hence most entrepreneurs wait with a lot of anxiety, the passage of the annual budgets. And when they come late as they will this year, the level of apprehension escalates. What is more, most entrepreneurs will have little or no hand in determining these policies, except, if they belong to the business membership organisati...