The State-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is the main target in the anti-corruption crusade.

Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari has already set into motion his anti-corruption crusade beginning with the State-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). The choice of the NNPC is probably explained by the report of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, an international independent body that monitors the oil and gas sector globally that revealed that  the NNPC failed to remit a total sum of 12.3 billion U.S. Dollars  crude oil proceeds into the Federation Account over a period of 10 years.

President Buhari has therefore sacked the NNPC Managing Director, Dr Joseph Dawha and replaced him with the University of Havard-trained lawyer, Dr Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, National Mirror reports. After sacking the Group’s Managing Director, President Buhari has also sacked all eight group executive directors. The management under Kachikwu has equally started the retirement of 38 senior managers who are due retirement from now to December 2016 designed to reduce cost, National Mirror said. “The exercise, apart from refocusing the corporation in the direction of a leaner and more efficient organization, has enormous cost-saving benefits,” Ibe Kachikwu is quoted as saying.

The new Managing Director of NNPC, reportedly told National Mirror after meeting President Buhari that the restructuring embarked upon, was meant to put the right personnel in the right positions for the purpose of accountability and service delivery. The restructuring process, he is reported to have said, would be three-pronged. With the first two having been completed which involved the Group Executive Directors and Group General Managers, attention would now be focused on the lower layer. He explained that in the three-pronged process, there was the people aspect which was currently handled. 

“After people at the right places, you are going to get  forensic audit done so  that we know clearly, proper forensic audit  that will cover us all the way to 2014, 2015, that will be able to say to you, this is the state of the company,” he reportedly further explained.  “At the end of the day, NNPC isn’t public service. It’s a corporation and we run like a company generating money for the people of Nigeria. And so, the whole concept of anything goes should stop,” he said.

The launch of Buhari’s anti-corruption crusade comes at the time security concerns are seriously undermining government’s action. The Boko Haram terrorist group leader Abubakar Shekau who was purportedly said to be replaced, has in an audio message denied the replacement.