BY NSE ANTHONY-UKO, Abuja
The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, Mallam Mele Kyari has attributed the LEADERSHIP Award to the teamwork of the management and staff of the company, noting that the recognition would not have been possible without the collective efforts of all NNPC staffers.
He spoke yesterday when he received the award letter, presented to him by the editor-in-chief, LEADERSHIP Group Ltd, Mr Azu Ishiekwene, who led other management staff on a courtesy visit to the NNPC Towers.
Kyari emerged LEADERSHIP CEO of The Year2021 for his strategic intervention in turning the NNPC into a profit-making national oil company and driving the present administration’s gas revolution among other innovations.
An elated Kyari said, “It is really a privilege to be recognised by LEADERSHIP as ‘CEO Of The Year’. To me, CEO means chief education officer, if you cannot educate you shouldn’t be a CEO, and you can’t execute if you don’t have people to work with you.?
He described NNPC as the largest enterprise in the country, saying it hosts the brightest of people that can be found in the oil industry.
He said, “They (multinational oil companies) know that we have better-skilled people in NNPC than they do. They know that we have better capacity than they do.
“We are very proud of this and any recognition anyone has here is to all of us. It would not have been possible without the collective efforts of all of us. And I congratulate our team for the recognition and we’ll continue to execute in a critical manner, particularly in an area where we can get our economy supported by making sure that energy is available to all Nigerians in an affordable and sustainable manner so that prosperity can be generated in a bigger way and ultimately many of the indices that you have seen around including lack of security and peace would be minimised.”
“We appreciate the gesture and the consideration and on behalf of all of us here, we thank you most immensely.”
Kyari said the overall plan is to make NNPC operate as a multi-trillion naira company, the most capitalised company in the country, having the highest assets of any company in Africa and be the biggest company in Africa.
He admitted that the NNPC has had its constraints which were being addressed through the Petroleum Industry Act.
“It simply means that this is the company that will compete with anyone else in any manner possible as allowed by the law, and we will do better than any other company. More than that we have a responsibility to be accountable to our shareholders, the over 200 million Nigerians and that is why we are doing very many strange things that companies don’t do. One of them is that we are the only company that publishes its activities on monthly basis, it’s not done anywhere in the world. We have challenged many companies to come out and do the same and no one can do this.
“Secondly, against all odds that you may think, we dared and published our audited financial statements and with the team spirit that we have, we were able to cut our costs and shape our business and we came out with positive numbers subsequently.
“We are now publishing all the PMS evacuation from the depots. Every litre of product that has left the depot, we publish it and those that are available. Anyone can cross check it. We are also moving down to the level of the states, we will know for each state which area and which filling station it goes to and whether or not it was sold in the filling station. We have full data around every litre of product that comes into the country.
“Next, we are trying to refine so that we’ll have refined product data. We can also tell Nigerians, what this subsidy conversation means and put numbers around it and publish for Nigerians to see”.
Earlier, the Editor-in-Chief of LEADERSHIP, Mr Azu Ishiekwene told the NNPC Management that the award was in recognition of Kyari’s modest efforts in repositioning the NNPC and putting it on the path to profitability.
Mr Ishiekwene was accompanied on the visit by the group managing director, LEADERSHIP Group Ltd, Muazu Elazeh and director, LEADERSHIP Group Ltd, Mr Abraham Nda-Isaiah.
The formal presentation of the award and conference is scheduled to be held on 17th May, 2022 at the International Conference Centre.
