The ill-health of President Muhammadu Buhari has placed critical oil industry decisions that were hitherto of the exclusive reserve of a substantive oil minister on Dr. Ibe Kachikwu.
This development is unsettling some Northern cabal who are known as the “president’s men.” President Buhari, who through a letter to the National Assembly in 2015 declared his decision to “oversee” the Ministry of Petroleum Resources, had before his latest trip to the United Kingdom for medical follow-up, according to New Telegraph investigation, asked the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources to “go ahead with some critical decisions, including, but not limited to overseeing the forthcoming oil bloc allocations if necessary.”
A source at the Presidency told this newspaper that the announcement of Kachikwu as a substantive minister, which is likely on the President’s return, would largely depend on the way he discharges responsibility now that the president is away. A cabal in the Presidency, members of whom are majorly of Northern extraction, he stated, is opposed to these developments.
“They murmured when the President allowed Dr. Kachikwu to take over as the substantive Chairman of the Board of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) because the post is for a substantive minister. Now they are greatly unsettled that the status of a full minister has fallen on his laps, particularly due to the ill-health of the President who is abroad on an indefinite medical trip,” he said.
Besides, Kachikwu had been entangled in silent battle against some core oil and gas industry stakeholders who still believed that despite his long years of work at Exxonmobil Corporation, his background as a lawyer still disqualifies him as a core oil and gas industry person. He said: “Go to top notch hotels in Lagos and Abuja, you are likely to run into these men who are geologists and petroleum engineers of various statuses.
The other time, at Four Point by Sheraton, they freely refered to him as a disco dancer.
“All these still come down to the fact that they still do not see him as one of them. But as fate will have it, he will make more core and critical decisions now that the ill-health of Mr. President is getting too long and the industry has to be kept running.”
