ABUJA—The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC,
yesterday, announced the retirement of the chief executive and two other
senior executive officers of its retail segment, NNPC Retail Limited.
The NNPC, in a statement by its Group General Manager, Group
Public Affairs Division, Mr. Ndu Ughamadu, said the retired executives
were Mrs. Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, Managing Director, NNPC Retail Limited;
Mr. Alpha Mamza, Executive Director, Operations, NNPC Retail Limited;
and Mr. Oluwa Kayode Erinoso, Manager, Distribution, NNPC Retail
Limited.
Nnamdi-Ogbue
The NNPC also announced the redeployment of four officers to fill the vacant positions which arose as a result of the retirements.
Ughamadu said those deployed to fill the vacant positions in
the NNPC Retail were Mr. Adeyemi Adetunji, who becomes Managing
Director; Mr. Lawal Bello, Executive Director, Operations; Mrs. Affiong
Akpasubi, Executive Director, Services; and Mr. Agwandas Andrawus,
Manager, Distribution.
The NNPC disclosed that the appointments took immediate
effect, adding that until his new assignment as the Managing Director of
NNPC Retail, Adetunji was General Manager, Strategy & Planning, Gas
& Power and also former General Manager, Transformation Office.
Commenting on the new appointments, Group Managing Director
of the NNPC, Mr Maikanti Baru, charged the deployed staff to remain
committed to their duties in line with the transformation aspirations of
the management.
Though the NNPC did not state the reason for retirement of
Nnamdi-Ogbue, sources, however, stated that it might be connected to the
alleged illegal sale of about 130 million litres of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, valued at N17.439 billion, belonging to the NNPC by two firms, MRS Oil and Capital Oil and Gas.
Chief Operating Officer, NNPC Downstream, Mr. Henry
Ikem-Obih, while announcing the development last month, disclosed that
the NNPC had set up two committees to evaluate the roles played by some
of its staff in the illegal product evacuation and had undertaken a
review of its entire throughput policy in order to align it with global best practices.
He added that as part of efforts to forestall a repeat of
similar occurrence in the future, a disciplinary committee was already
investigating the level of involvement of its staff, with a view to
applying appropriate sanctions as a deterrence measure.
Providing details on the alleged infraction, Ikem-Obih,
disclosed that the violation was discovered earlier in the year when the
corporation needed to access the over 100 million litres of petrol stored at the Capital Oil & Gas depot for NNPC Retail and just over 30 million litres in MRS Limited depot all in Apapa area of Lagos.
He said: “We instructed the Nigerian Products Marketing
Company, NPMC, a subsidiary of NNPC, to send additional trucks to those
locations to move products for distribution aimed at meeting a supply
shortfall we discovered in the market, but after days of not being able
to access the terminals, we had to take a decision as NNPC management
invited auditors and inspectors to do a physical check on the inventories.
“The visit revealed that there was no molecule of product for the NNPC to evacuate.”
Ikem-Obih disclosed that the infraction by the two
downstream companies was a clear violation of existing throughput
contract which prohibits the owners of the facilities from tempering
with the volumes in their custody without express permission of the Corporation
“Armed with this information we promptly called them in to
explain to us what happened to our product in their custody. After the
meeting with them, we issued them with letters and told them in clear
terms to do either of two things:
return to us the full volume of what has been stored in their depots
litre- for- litre or pay the full value of the products they took
without our approval.”
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