By Sonny Atumah

As we marked Nigeria’s 55th Independence anniversary two days ago in what was low key, we examine with introspection our journey in nationhood and how patriotic or otherwise we have been or would have been in managing our petroleum resources and assets for the greatest good for the greatest number.  It is time to acknowledge the fact that management bandwidths are determined by individual capabilities.

Sometimes parochial reasons come to play that badly managed public enterprises are government’s follies.  Often times patriotic versus selfish concerns compete within our subconscious in the management of our commonwealth; so melancholia determines the way some manage treasures.

We have had it severally that managers who have no clues to nation’s problems in our clime do not throw in the towel as the headmaster in the Guinean writer, Camara Laye’s The African Child would do by resigning his appointment for inefficiency in his administrative machinery.

Felons are often let off the hook because there is no law so there is no offence. There is no recourse to punishment or reward, the hallmark of corporate governance. They often reincarnate in garbs of management gurus to buy government privatized enterprises that they believe government could not manage.

Many private organizations including airlines, conglomerates, textiles companies, finance houses, media houses, farms, schools and many more have also gone under. It is a trajectory that privatization proponents are yet to face reality that infantile managerial acumen and technical incompetence, the banes of our enterprises are not the exclusive preserve of government.

Some private sector experts mismanage banks and it is a regular occurrence in Nigeria. When it happens we seek Central Bank’s bailout to recover individual deposits that may not have been insured. The Abacha regime attempted the failed bank tribunals that jailed some while others fled overseas to seek asylum in the name of being persecuted at home.

Perhaps we have not considered national resources with assets as treasures that we must nurture, preserve to cherish. Premeditated arguments are that governments are not good managers; we go to town balderdash that government is a bad manager; and the casualty is that we should sell public property. Government is not a good manager and we ask who the government is.

Public and private individuals collude, mismanage and often times convert public funds into private use as ones lost property to repossess. With temerity and audacity we ask government to sell public property and posing as investors; indeed our ships have come in.

Our refineries are not working for obvious reasons of corruption, mismanagement and technical incompetence. Instead of tackling the problems that have manifested, we say sell the refineries. We cultivate attitudes of seeking for the line of weak resistance to follow as water will always do.

Nations that have developed and those that are emerging never looked for the easy way out. They found lasting solutions to complex problems but ours as a nation is prodigal that the slightest challenge, we call for the sale of critical infrastructure bequeathed for posterity.

We pride ourselves as an oil rich nation. It took Shell 50 years from the acquisition of her crown permission in 1908, prospecting in 1935 for oil in the Niger Delta, to 1958 when its first ship laden with 5000 barrels of crude oil set sail for a European Refinery. Shell also set the stage for downstream investments in the country. It drew plans for downstream investments in construction of a refinery in Port Harcourt.

The Oil Boom increased our standard of living with more energy demand for vehicles and industry. Three more Refineries were constructed which by omission or commission were systematically run down in two decades. The solution again is sales which I believe their various states are not beyond redemption.

The Group Managing Director (GMD) of the NNPC Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, last week in Lagos told Journalists that government decision is to hold on to the refineries against experts’ advice to sell them off to private investors. He noted that the sale of the refineries may not be ruled out if they continue to prove unprofitable after all efforts to revive them.

Ones advice to the GMD is to rule out the option of sale of the refineries which are national assets. There are many technical and management options still left to him; he said he has given his managers a 90-day ultimatum to prove themselves. In management there is reward and punishment option which he has told his managers he would employ.

A would be investor would do what we may fail to do to get results. They would hire the best hands from anywhere in the industry to rehabilitate, manage and retain the facility. We lost the Eleme petrochemical facility when we sold it to an investor who in August 2006 did a normal Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) and in three months, the facility was back to life. Most local staff shaped up to the employment market thereafter.  That is management by objective.

The newest complex refinery in the United States the Marathon Petroleum Company, Garyville, Louisiana was constructed in 1977. The 200,000 bpd facility was in January 2015 expanded to a 522,000 bpd refining capacity. The Digboi Refinery in Assam, India reputed to be the oldest in the world, built in 1901 has been upgrading units of the refinery.

The motor spirit quality (MSQ) upgrading project was commissioned in 2010. The new terminal which has a state of the art facility in the refinery was commissioned in 2011.

Let us think as the Austrian born American management consultant, Peter Drucker in Managing for Results would say: “Before an executive can think of tackling the future, he must be able therefore to dispose of the challenges of today in less time and with greater impact and permanence.”

Our national oil company should run like others in OPEC. We must not shy away from the problem; do not sell the refineries. We are encouraging the GMD to do more as it is our Nigerian problem to tackle. The powerful group of the South-South Cooperation, the BRICS (Brasil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) excepting South Africa have robust National Oil Companies with strong downstream investments in refineries and petrochemicals. That is the way to go.