NNPC, Oando and Atiku Abubakar’s attacks

By Temitope Ajayi

By his advanced age and eminent status as a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is by no means qualified to be an elder statesman. Statesmen are highly venerated and revered people to whom we go for advice, guidance and direction.

But sometimes, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar behaves as if he should be removed from that exclusive club. Or how else can one interpret some of his utterances and statements? Or is the former vice president merely playing politics? But politics should have its season and time and should sometimes give way for nation-building and patriotism. Statesmen are not given to flippancy. Neither are they whimsical. They are measured in words and deeds, a quality that Alhaji Atiku has not demonstrated in public discourse since losing the last presidential election as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Alhaji Atiku, obviously still stung by his electoral loss, can not see that a person of his profile must make interventions decorously and decently.

As a former Vice President of Nigeria, Alhaji Atiku self-denigrates when he makes interventions that eschew basic decency and without weighing how such unguarded outpourings portray the country and the implications for businesses and state institutions.

A man who still nurses the ambition to be president despite being close to the Octogenarian Club should be mindful not to destroy the institutions of state upon which the government functions.

For reasons borne out of desperation and frustration arising from an unrealised presidential ambition, Alhaji Atiku and his attack dogs have been unrelenting in their assault on NNPC and members of President Bola Tinubu’s family without any justifiable reason. It is more telling that the attacks have been based on outright lies, half-truths, and deliberate distortion of facts to hoodwink the public.

In his recent tirades, the former Vice President falsely accused President Tinubu, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and Oando Plc, where the President’s relative, Mr Wale Tinubu, holds sway as the Chief Executive, of unwholesome practice in a purely commercial transaction involving a downstream company where Oando had interests and the retail arm of NNPC.

For Alhaji Atiku, facts are not sacred if his politics is served. The damage he has inflicted on the economy and the public image of the entities involved in this matter means nothing to a man who wants to pollute the environment enough to create a credibility crisis.
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While Alhaji Atiku, on whose authority false claims are regularly made via reckless press statements, is vicariously liable, it is pathetic that the defeated PDP presidential candidate parades media aides such as Paul Ibe and Phrank Shaibu, who also lack introspection. The two pitiable men, who must be seen working to justify their pay, have scant regard for the truth.

Ibe and Shaibu have a superficial knowledge of the issues they raised in many of their arid press releases. The two men are either too lazy to do the necessary research on the subject matter or at least seek the opinions of experts for proper education on the transaction dynamics involved in the OVH/NNPC deal and that of OANDO/AGIP divestment.

In one of his press statements, Alhaji Atiku misinformed the public when he accused President Tinubu of mortgaging the country to his family members and associates. In his rage, he said NNPC puts its retail arm under the control of OVH, a company he alleged that Oando, led by Wale Tinubu, owns a 49% stake in. One would expect that a former Vice President of Nigeria should speak to facts and not innuendos. This is more so for a man who expects the public to take him seriously. To start with, Wale Tinubu and Oando do not own a 49% stake in OVH after Oando sold its downstream business.

Evidence declines to support any of the wild claims contained in the Atiku’s press statements. NNPC has rightly responded to Atiku and set the records straight in a statement issued by its Chief Communication Officer, Femi Soneye, on 22 August 2024. In the statement entitled ‘OVH Acquisition: The Facts by NNPC Limited,” Soneye firmly pushed back against Atiku’s tissue of lies thus:

“At the time NNPC Ltd acquired OVH in 2022, Oando (in which Mr. Wale Tinubu has equity interest), had fully divested its equity in OVH to the two other partners – Vitol and Helios. Oando began its divestment in 2016, with Vitol and Helios coming in as equity partners, leading to the name change from Oando to OVH. In 2019, Oando fully divested its equity interest in OVH, resulting in Vitol and Helios holding 50% equity interests, respectively.

“Upon acquisition of OVH by NNPC Ltd, NNPC Retail Ltd and OVH effectively became subsidiaries of NNPC Ltd. However, based on professional advice and sound commercial considerations, NNPC Ltd opted to merge NNPC Retail Limited into OVH, and then retain NNPC Retail Limited as the company name post-merger. The first step of merging NNPC Retail Ltd into OVH has been completed, and the post-merger renaming of NNPC Retail Ltd is ongoing. Contrary to the false alarm, neither Wale Tinubu nor the President has any interest in the OVH acquisition.”

Providing more significant details and clarity on the OVH/NNPC deal, Mr Femi Awoyemi, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of Proshare decried how political actors like Alhaji Atiku pursue personal political agendas at the expense of the economy and public good, arguing that “players seeking to push self-interested agendas must come with evidence and not innuendos.”

Mr Awoyemi averred: “Despite misgivings about an entity, I, as a member of the governance community, understand that it is unhelpful if we allow misrepresentations to replace objectivity and accountability.

“On this note, I offer my thoughts on the NNPC-OVH issue without holding a fort for any party. Public and analyst records available to our economic and market intelligence (EMI) unit affirm that Oando Plc was out of OVH three (3) years before NNPC Retail chose to buy it out. (OVH stands for Oando, Vitol, and Helios). A review of Oando’s financial statements shows that it divested its downstream business (OVH) in three tranches: 60%, 35%, and 5%.”

From the dates of Oando’s divestment from its downstream business, which started with the first one to OVH on 30 June 2016 and ended with the final exit on 29 November 2019, the company no longer participated in subsequent transactions between OVH and NNPC Retail.

We are in a political environment where politicians like Alhaji Atiku are constantly plotting and scheming, using every fair and foul means, but it should not be so. After all the divisive rhetoric of electioneering, a nation deserves healing time when the focus should be solely on nation-building and governance. Alhaji Atiku is not willing to yield any space. He wants to remain in the election mood till the next electoral season, dishing falsehoods in industrial quantities to create his alternative universe. He is acting out the Trumpian playbook, which is to constantly push out falsehoods in the forlorn hope that they would gain currency and that people would believe.

That was why Shaibu doubled down on the lies on the OANDO/AGIP deal when the ones by Paul Ibe did not gain traction. In a scathing and uninformed statement issued by Shaibu, Alhaji Abubakar queried the Oando/AGIP deal, seeking to know why the transaction has gone through while that of SEPLAT/Mobil is yet to be fully consummated. Alhaji Atiku’s cheap shot and laborious attempt to draw false equivalence should never be lost on anyone. If the former Vice President and Shaibu had applied themselves well, they should have known that the circumstances around Oando/AGIP and SEPLAT/Mobil were different.

Industry regulator the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) gave an update on divestment activities by the International Oil Companies in a statement issued on Monday, August 26, 2024. Its Head of Public Affairs, Mrs. Olaide Shonola signed the statement. The issues involved in the two upstream deals differed.

While both transactions predate the current administration, Oando/AGIP did not face the legal encumbrances faced by SEPLAT/MOBIL.

On a comparative basis, through a letter dated February 24, 2022, Mobil notified the regulator of its intention to assign 100% of its issued shares to Seplat Offshore Energy Limited. NUPRC did not consent to this assignment because Mobil should have obtained a waiver of pre-emption rights and the consent of NNPC. The matter was held up in court in Suit No: FCT/HC/BW/173/2022 Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited versus Mobil Producing Nigeria Unlimited, Mobil Development Nigeria Inc., Mobil Exploration Nigeria Inc., and Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission. The transaction could not have been concluded until the parties resolved the dispute.

According to the statement by NUPRC, NNPC and MPNU resolved their dispute in June 2024, and MPNU, by letter dated 26 June 2024, informed the regulator of the resolution of the dispute. Upon resolution of this dispute, the Commission communicated its no-objection decision to the assignment via a letter dated July 4, 2024, and requested MPNU to provide information and documentation required under the Commission’s due diligence checklist to enable the Commission to conduct its due diligence as required under the PIA. MPNU, by letter dated 18 July 2024, provided the information requested by the Commission.

Accordingly, MPNU’s application to the Commission for consent is undergoing due diligence review under the same divestment framework applied to the NAOC-Oando and Equinor-Chappal divestment. The Commission’s due diligence process is ongoing and within the 120-day timeline required by the PIA.

Unfortunately, Alhaji Atiku ignored the facts above in the transactions to make a mountain out of a molehill as part of his grand design to misinform the public and continue his needless war of attrition against President Tinubu.

The PDP presidential candidate has elected to seek and push darkness. Where Alhaji Atiku and others like him see only despair, President Tinubu will continue to work toward building a virile society and a buoyant economy while holding on to the promise of a greater Nigeria.

-Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity