FG Restructures NNPC, Splits Into 4 Autonomous Units

THE Federal Government has finally unbundled the nation's 39-year old Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) into four autonomous units with new Chief Executive Officers to manage them respectively.

Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Dr. Ibe Kachikwu who also doubles as the Group Managing Director of NNPC disclosed this development yesterday at a briefing in Abuja adding essentially that the restructuring will not lead to job losses as feared in some quarters particularly among the members of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN.

“The new NNPC comprises a lean headquarters and four autonomous business units. The principle of restructuring approved by the President is that nobody losses work.
I do not have the mandate of the president to create a job loss situation, but to try to ensure that everyone gets busy, unless for reasons of bad staff performance and fraud. There is no mass attempt to let people go. 

"However, we don’t want people coming to the office to read newspapers. We want everybody to get busy and earn money. If we do that we will realize that there would be adequate staff to man the different units, and that we don’t really have the problem of over-staff after all,” he said.

The four units are  Upstream Company which will now comprise of NPDC and the IDSL;  Downstream Company consists of Retail, NPMC and NPSC; Refinery Company will consist of WRPC, KRPC and PHRC and Gas/ Power Company while the Gas and Power is now made up of NGPTC, NGMC and Gas and Power Investment.

 

Speaking further, Kachikwu said the Federal Government has approved the appointment of Chief Executives for the companies: They are: Bello Rabiu as CEO of the Upstream Company; Henry Iken Obih for Downstream; Anibor Kragha for Refineries and Saidu Mohammed for Gas and Power.  

However, the GMD  refuted the allegation that a total of 30 companies was unbundled of the corporation adding the Group Managing Director is still the Chief Executive of NNPC, and therefore urged the public to discountenance the rumours.

Meanwhile, the leadership of PENGASSIN through its spokesperson, Emmanuel Ojugbana has criticised the unbundling of the NNPC claiming that the union was not carried along in the exercise. In similar vein, the President of the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Igwe Achese, had said union would not accept the decision without knowing how the manpower that would operate in the 30 companies would be management. Consequently, workers have reportedly shut down the operations at NNPC.