Ibe Kachikwu’s seven big wins

Even as Nigeria is trying very hard to diversify its economy so that agriculture, mining and SMEs can form some of its other main pillars, the oil and gas sector will for now and for some time to come, remain its man pillar. This is because the task of diversifying a mono-cultural economy anywhere in […]

Even as Nigeria is trying very hard to diversify its economy so that agriculture, mining and SMEs can form some of its other main pillars, the oil and gas sector will for now and for some time to come, remain its man pillar. This is because the task of diversifying a mono-cultural economy anywhere in the world is never accomplished overnight. It surely takes a while. It therefore means that for Nigeria, oil and gas will maintain its dominance for quite some time, depending, of course, on how committed we are in our diversification drive.
This explains why the Honourable Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, has been unrelenting in his commitment to reform, retool and refocus policy-making, regulatory and revenue-yielding parastatals and agencies under the Ministry of Petroleum Resources to operate optimally for the benefit of the national economy which has been experiencing some distress since the drastic fall in oil prices.
It is in line with this commitment that come Thursday, October 27, at the Banquet Hall of the State House, Aso Presidential Villa, Abuja, President Muhammadu Buhari is billed to unveil to Nigerians the Petroleum Industry Roadmap which Ibe Kachikwu, the Minister of State Petroleum, has codenamed 7Big Wins. What do the 7 Big Wins mean and what do they consist of?
The 7 Big Wins are seven major expected outcomes of an ambitious but well thought-out seven short and medium term priorities aimed at growing Nigeria’s oil and gas industry between 2015 and 2019.
The first of the seven-point agenda is improving security and ensuring environmental safety in the oil producing areas of the country in order to increase national crude oil production, attract investment and infrastructural development to the difficult terrain of the region.
Improving security here does not stand for the use of big guns to subdue some misguided militants who are advocating for a better or fairer deal in the sharing of assets that come from the exploitation of crude oil reserves and gas deposit in the region. Rather, it is envisaged that emphasis will be on a framework to boost infrastructural development, a lack which is one of the reasons that fuel the violent agitation in the region in the first place, a programme of economic empowerment through capacity building and other measures and another programme to deepen conversation between the government, oil companies and the people of the oil region. In short, the goal is to win peace and progress through diplomacy and a deployment of the dividends of oil wealth to impact the lives of the people who primarily suffer the collateral damage of oil exploration and exploitation.
Ibe Kachikwu has given example of what he intends to do in this regard by his shuttle diplomacy in the creeks of the Niger Delta, meeting with chiefs, youth and elders of the region pleading for peace and giving this government the chance to reverse decades of neglect.
The second plank of the Ibe Kachukwu agenda is that even within the oil and gas sector, there will be a shift in focus from oil to gas; there will be a gas revolution. Nigeria is more of a gas country than an oil one. Industry experts say that if Nigeria’s potential in gas is fully optimised or exploited, the country may move from its current position as the ninth gas-producing country in the world to about the fourth.
The Nigerian oil and gas sector has over the years been regulated by obsolete policies. The third plank of the Ibe Kachikwu agenda, therefore, is the review of old and moribund policies and laws, with the key action in this regard being the passage of the petroleum Industry reform bills. The plan is to break the existing Petroleum Industry Act into three bills for easier passage by the National Assembly into laws that focus on the governance of the petroleum industry, the fiscals and the legal.
Since his assumption of office, Ibe Kachikwu has seized every opportunity to tell Nigerians that one of his goals is to ensure that by 2018, Nigeria reduces the importation of petroleum products by 60 per cent and that by 2019, she becomes a net exporter of petroleum products and value-added petrochemicals. To be able to achieve these noble objectives, the man has promised and aggressive revamping of existing local refining capacity and expansion of domestic capacity through co-location, greenfield and modular refineries.
The fifth leg of the Roadmap is the creation of a business environment and investment drive that will accelerate income for Nigeria in the upstream, midstream and downstream sectors of the oil industry, Nigeria has not been maximizing her yields from all these sectors of the industry. Oil price may not be as healthy today as in the past yet optimal revenue from this source has not been fully exploited for the benefit of the Nigerian economy.
The drive for efficiency and transparency in the operation of the oil and gas industry in Nigeria is another of the goals which the Ministry of Petroleum Resources under the ministership of President Buhari and Ibe Kachikwu want to vigorously pursue. Before the Buhari-Ibe Kachikwu-Maikanti Baru era, the conduct of affairs in the national oil company- NNPC and its subsidiaries- was often described as opaque. The trio helmsmen are determined to do things in a more transparent manner and in a way to garner much more revenue to the national till.
The last leg of the Ibe-Kachikwu Roadmap is what is called Stakeholder Management and International Co-ordination. Here, the ultimate goal is to manage stakeholders in a way that every obstacle/ constraint to crude oil and gas production is eliminated. The idea also is to ensure visibility of Nigeria in the global oil production. One of the key successes achieved in this direction is the astute campaign which Nigeria waged that led to the election of Dr. Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, a Nigerian, as the current OPEC Secretary-General.
These, basically, are the core areas that Buhari and Ibe Kachikwu want to focus on in order to harness to the full, petroleum resources which God has bestowed on the nation even as efforts are on to diversify the economy away from dependence on that same resource.
Idang Alibi is the Director, Press and Public Relations, Ministry of Petroleum Resources.