Ibe Kachikwu, Idang Alibi, UNN
Nigeria's Minister of State for Petroleum Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu attends a news conference after the 168th Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) conference in Vienna, Austria, on Friday, Dec. 4, 2015. | The Trent

Ibe Kachikwu, Nigeria’s minister of state for petroleum, has revealed for the first time the response of President Muhammadu Buhari to the controversial memo on the group managing director of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, Maikanti Baru.

Last week, Nigerians expressed outrage after it was revealed that Dr. Kachikwu had written a memo to President Buhari expressing his disagreement with the conduct of Dr. Baru in appointments and issuing of oil contracts of over $25 billion.

Kachikwu, who spoke in Owerri, Imo State at the end of a three-day Nigerian Content Workshop organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board, on Friday, October 13, 2017 said the content of his letter did not border on fraud but on governance.

“The conversation has been largely misunderstood to bother on fraud. It was not on fraud, but on governance and suggestions on ways to go about it. I think a lot of people got it wrong,” the oil minister is quoted as saying by Punch.

“People dwell much on issues of sensationalism and leave the main substance. The group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, and I are working together as Mr. President had directed to move forward.”

“Mr. President has urged the two of us to find ways of working together to remove doubt and rift.” He added, “Mr. President is a decent man and what he wants to achieve in this country is to live a legacy for posterity. He is a sincere leader, so nobody should accuse him of engaging in fraud.”

He commended the management of NCDMB led by its executive secretary, Engineer Simbi Wakote, for scoring high in her efforts to promote Nigerian content in the oil and gas sector of the nation’s economy.

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