Of Kachikwu and Baru

The Kachikwu/Baru feud story has so many angles, so many dimensions, so many implications and so many consequences that a columnist is not sure where to begin or to stop. It is coming only weeks after the news media feasted on a story where Minister of Women Affairs Aisha Alhassan said in a leaked Sallah […]

The Kachikwu/Baru feud story has so many angles, so many dimensions, so many implications and so many consequences that a columnist is not sure where to begin or to stop. It is coming only weeks after the news media feasted on a story where Minister of Women Affairs Aisha Alhassan said in a leaked Sallah courtesy call video that Atiku Abubakar is her 2019 president in waiting. Rather than step back from the remark when the video went viral, she confirmed to reporters that she would support Atiku’s candidacy even if President Buhari contests again in 2019. What a big scandal, political pundits and media men said in unison. 

They spoke too soon. The fresh scandal that erupted last week with the leak of Dr. Ibe Kachikwu’s letter to the president guarantees that Mrs Alhassan’s remarks will not get honourable mention in the media again anytime soon. In Nigerian terms, her ministerial portfolio is a toy compared to the Petroleum Ministry. Kachikwu is only the Minister of State for Petroleum and not the senior minister [which is Buhari himself] but he is the one who often speaks regarding fuel prices, fuel scarcity, oil workers’ strikes, maintenance of refineries, gas supply to power stations and engagement with Niger Delta militants to stop vandalising oil facilities. These are some of the most serious issues affecting the day to day lives of Nigerians and anyone who is in charge of that must be an extremely important public figure.

Now, Kachikwu was not known as a public figure in Nigeria before July 2015, when Buhari plucked him out of the private sector and made him Group Managing Director [GMD] of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC. In Nigerian terms, GMD of NNPC is the juiciest job after the president’s chair and as juicy as, if not juicier than Governor of the Central Bank. Everyone assumed in 2015 that given Buhari’s personal knowledge of the oil sector as a former Petroleum Minister and given the fact that fighting corruption is his top priority, Kachikwu must a magic wand operator and a near-saint to get the plum job. Remember that when Buhari constituted his cabinet four months later he gave Kachikwu the additional post of Minister of State for Petroleum. Given that this country was already reeling from revelations of the misdeeds of our previous oil czar, Mrs Diezani Allison-Madueke, it was no small wonder that so much oil power was again bestowed on one person.

This anomaly was corrected a few months later when the two posts were split and Dr. Maikanti Baru got the GMD’s post while Kachikwu retained the ministerial job. We do not know why Buhari split the two jobs and when he did, why he gave Kachikwu the less ‘juicy’ of the two posts. He could at least have given him a choice, in which case Kachikwu might have chosen the junior but juicier of the two posts!

That affair reminded me of Alhaji Abdulkadir Balarabe Musa. When he became Governor of old Kaduna State in 1979, Balarabe Musa appointed Alhaji Abidu Yazid as Secretary to the Government and Head of Service. These posts were held by one person during military ruler but the 1979 Constitution split them into two different posts. Zaria community elders reportedly protested that the old Zaria Province should get one of the two posts but the governor was adamant. A year later, Balarabe Musa suddenly split the two posts. According to a story in New Nigerian at the time, the governor called Abu Gidado, told him that he was splitting the two posts but the incumbent was not offered either of them. Instead, Gidado was offered the post of Permanent Secretary with Special Advisory Powers, which he declined. Dr Yusuf Bala Usman then became the SSG. Compared to that, Buhari’s treatment of Kachikwu was more generous.

It could have been better, however, if Buhari had relinquished the senior Petroleum Minister’s portfolio to Kachikwu. Even though Obasanjo also retained that post for himself and some Nigerian military rulers retained the Defence portfolio for themselves, it tends to send a wrong signal that the president does not trust anybody. Nor is it really necessary for control purposes because the president can still exercise whatever level of control he wants to over any sector without being the minister. To boot, he cannot possibly have the time for the day to day running of the oil ministry. If he had ceded the post to Kachikwu, he would have softened the blow on his ego, would have enabled the minister to assert himself over his parastatals, and would have silenced inter-regional warriors who said the North took all the juicy oil posts.

So Kachikwu was an aggrieved man, part of it of his own making. Reports say when he was the two-in-one boss, he took Baru, who was the most senior of NNPC’s Group Executive Directors, and sidelined him to the redundant post of Technical Adviser in the Minister’s office. All the people who know Baru say he is a pious and religious man, so I expected him to forgive and forget that slight because God later did His own posting and Baru bounced back as GMD. Despite recent videos of him performing a traditional ritual and dancing around in leopard’s skin, Kachikwu is also said by those who know him to be a pious and religious man. The wonder is that two essentially good men failed to get along.

Last week Kachikwu’s spokesman expressed anguish that the minister’s memo to the president leaked. His real anguish is that the president could suspect him of leaking the letter. Kachikwu has the first motive of leaking the letter because he could not see Buhari to lay his complaints and though he sent a letter five weeks ago, Buhari apparently never saw it until the story broke. Leaking papers is a time honoured method of stampeding rulers to take action and the leak made Buhari to immediately see Kachikwu last Friday. On the other hand, Kachikwu might not have leaked the letter; maybe some people in the president’s office did in order to make him look disloyal. After all, Nigerians still don’t know for real who leaked Governor Nasiru El-Rufa’i’s private memo to Buhari. The outspoken governor said Presidency officials did so, not him.

Now, if Kachikwu and Baru failed to work together in harmony it is not good for their individual images but it is tragic for Nigeria and doubly tragic for President Buhari. This is because he is the one that will get the ultimate blame for system failure, for failing to deliver the goods, and for the appearance of rancour and disharmony in the administration. Nigerians expect him to unravel this affair quickly, apportion blame where it belongs and punish anyone who subverted ethics and procedure or did any wrong doing. But how soon will that be? Remember that the president is yet to put to rest the cases of suspended SGF Babachir David Lawal and suspended NIA director general Ayo Oke, even though the highest possible probe panel headed by the Vice President and made up of the Attorney General and the National Security Adviser found both men guilty, according to a leaked report.

Let me offer the presidency free advice as to how to quickly get this matter off the newspaper front pages while it tardily shops around for a solution. Beginning from today, it should roll out some earthshaking political and socio-economic programs. National attention will quickly shift to those issues. If they are earthshaking enough, no one will mention Kachikwu and Baru again for weeks.