Obasanjo sacks head of state oil company

The head of the state company which oversees Nigeria’s oil industry was on Monday relieved of his job by President Olusegun Obasanjo. No reason was given for the dismissal, which was announced in a terse government statement. Jackson Gaius-Obaseki was appointed group managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) after Obasanjo won a four-year term in 1999. He has been replaced with Funso Kupolokun, who until his appointment, was a special assistant to Obasanjo on petroleum industry matters. Speculation had been rife for weeks about the imminent fall of Gaius-Obaseki, who is blamed for the fuel shortages that have gripped Africa’s leading oil producer intermittently over four years. Despite the existence of four government-owned refineries with installed capacity to meet domestic needs, Nigeria has depended on fuel imports since Obasanjo took office because the ill-maintained refineries had never functioned at more than 30 percent capacity. Yet, the government admits more than US $400 million had been spent on their maintenance during the period. On Friday Obasanjo declared he suspected sabotage by interest groups involved in fuel imports for the failure of the refineries to work at full capacity and the country’s continued dependence on imported fuel. Calls for Gaius-Obaseki to be sacked reached a crescendo in September after he told a national daily that the NNPC had spent 224 million naira (US $1.7 million) to maintain two suites at the Abuja Hilton Hotel for him in the past four years. Gaius-Obaseki further outraged the public by declaring that staying in the hotel was a sacrifice he had to make for the nation as the expended amount was inadequate to build him befitting accommodation. Another key change in the oil industry also announced on Monday was the appointment of Edmund Daukoru as Obasanjo’s special adviser on petroleum and energy. Daukoru, a former head of NNPC, replaces Rilwanu Lukman (the former secretary general of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) who resigned from his position on 1 November. Apart from managing Nigeria’s 57 percent stake in six joint ventures with oil transnationals that account for more than 95 percent of the country’s daily oil output of over two million barrels, the NNPC also manages operations including refining and distribution of fuel and stakes in natural gas plants. Though oil exports account for more than 95 percent of Nigeria’s export income, impoverished communities in the Niger Delta region that produces almost all of the country’s oil accuse the government-transnationals partnership of denying them access to the wealth produced on their land. Restiveness in the region in recent years has resulted in thousands of deaths through ethnic violence, violent disruption of oil operations by armed militants and massive pipeline fires caused by sabotage.