Each time you listen to Mele Kolo Kyari, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, you get the impression of a man who wants to be different. A man determined to take the path less travelled. Like walking alone, being partially deaf to the mob.

The 19^th GMD of NNPC obviously came to his new beat with a mind-set. As an NNPC insider and industry person for over three decades, he knew there was something glumly about the public image of NNPC. Public perception was unpleasant. A nest of corruption. A place of easy money. The epicentre of sleaze and slush funds. Previous leaderships of the petrochemical behemoth didn’t help matters. It’s either they were caught slurred in the juice of corruption or their torrid tales bloomed after office. Whichever way, their stories stink. And so does that of the NNPC. Grim opacity and proven cases of sprucing the figures and smartening the statistics highlight operations. These were the sludgy signposts that hallmarked a majority of the previous leaderships.

Perhaps Kyari knew these were also the Achilles’ heels of his predecessors. Booby-traps that brought down the high-flyers from their elevated horses. Prior to his appointment barely one year and-a-half ago, Kyari, a Maiduguri, Borno State-born Petroleum Engineering graduate was the Group General Manager in charge of the Crude Oil Marketing Department (COMD). He has chalked up over 33 years cognate experience in the oil and gas industry. This must have helped him to mind the bottomline.

This year, NNPC marked its 43^rd anniversary having been established on April 1, 1977. And for over four decades, it has been perceived as wayward and profligate by the Nigerian public. Kyari is not ashamed to acknowledge the dirty perception NNPC conjures in the public discourse. And in his word, he was determined to change the narrative; to re-write the story. To make a new garment for the corporation. He came to the job armed with a Presidential briefing: Clean up the mess, make the books open; engender transparency.

Upon his appointment, President Muhammadu Buhari who also doubles as the Minister of Petroleum Resources has strengthened his hands with a clear brief: Don’t panic, don’t fret, don’t succumb to influence-peddling. Buhari should know. He was the Minister of Petroleum under the military administration of General Olusegun Obasanjo. That was when the refineries were built. Buhari understands the dialectics of crude oil business. He knows the contours. He understands the slippery labyrinths of what has become the nation’s gravy train.  The moment you are appointed head of the NNPC, you become a sitting target for merchants of all forms of corruption including bribery, cronyism, nepotism, influence peddling, embezzlement and such like.

So, when Buhari appointed Kyari, the president was clear in his instruction and message to him: “I won’t pressure you; I won’t send anybody to you; come back to me if you need help.” Buhari himself has remained an enigma of sort. He remains the only politically-exposed Army General of his status who refused to amass wealth at the expense of the public. In his military days, Buhari evinced uncommon frugality and sobriety towards public fund. As minister of petroleum during General Obasanjo regime, he rebuffed influence-peddling. He resisted the candy of corruption and the dainty of cheap, illicit money. His brief to Kyari tells it all.

Now, about one-and-a-half years into his job, Kyari thinks he has carried out the President’s mandate. To realise the mandate will mean walking alone, if possible. It would mean going against the tide. It would entail being ‘abnormal’. For an institution where corruption and lack of transparency is the norm, it would take the ‘abnormal’ to reset the norm, restore order and create a new value set that keeps the books open.

Maya Angelou once said: “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” This fits the Kyari story. To be normal at NNPC is to apply the old template of graft and greasy deals. To avoid this, Kyari has to do the abnormal. Against the subsisting convention, he published the audited accounts of NNPC for 2018 and 2019. Now, that’s abnormal in an environment where being normal is to do the opposite: Don’t audit, don’t publish. Keep our secret to ourselves. It’s almost crazy, insane. But Kyari is not crazy; never insane.

Was he merely grandstanding? Why would he take the lid off what many people perceive as a seething pot of corruption? He explains why. NNPC is owned by Nigerians, meaning that over 200 million Nigerians are the shareholders. This means he and his team at NNPC are employed by Nigerians to help manage the industry upon which the national budget is benchmarked. Therefore, the same shareholders (Nigerians) have a right to know how their business is being managed. To establish whether the enterprise is running at a loss or profitably. Keeping the books open will place a great deal of responsibility on the shoulders of the managers. Kyari is not afraid of responsibility and accountability. And it shows. Earlier this year, NNPC published the 2018 audited account. The result showed a loss of N803 billion. This got the management adopting smarter strategies to run lean and mean; to cut cost and turn the corner. It worked.  By the time it released the 2019 audited financial statement, it had achieved 99.7% reduction in its loss status, cutting loss from ₦803bn in 2018 to ₦1.7bn in 2019. This would never have been possible if Kyari had not summoned the courage to go public with the 2018 financial statement. The huge loss in 2018 made them to plug leakages, improve on prudence and introduce cost-saving measures. Over 50 cost-effective initiatives have been introduced.

Kyari says there’s a rebranded NNPC with a fresh vista and commitment to transparency and accountability in consonance with the global principles of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Kyari has kicked a fresh breath of openness into NNPC. He has refused to follow the crowd. Among the 19 CEOs that ever superintended the NNPC, he has opted to walk alone, to do things differently, to account to his employers (Nigerians).

The sage of all season, Albert Einstein, spoke experientially when he said that “the person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.” Kyari’s insistence to depart from the path of past leaders of the national corporation who kept the books sealed has already set him apart from the crowd. And it sure would take him to places none of his predecessors has ever seen or been before. Beyond the moral apparition surrounding the gesture, the Constitution demands that public officers should account to the people. Kyari’s insistence to open the books to Nigerians is itself a constitutional fulfilment. It puts him on the dais as a respecter of the tenets of the social contract and adherent of the principles of the rule of law. It takes courage to do this. He should be encouraged to stay the course!

Author: KEN UGBECHIE