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Confict Of Interest: Fire Adeniran From NNPC, Anti-Corruption Group Demands

September 9, 2015

An anti-corruption group, Civil Society Network Against Corruption (CSNAC), has demanded the immediate firing of Babatunde Victor Adeniran as the Group Executive Director, Commercial and Investment, of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

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In a statement issued today in Abuja, CSNAC argued that Mr. Adeniran has a conflict of conflict that should have disqualified him from appointment. According to CSNAC, Mr. Adeniran should have declined to serve when the NNPC’s newly appointed Group Managing Director, Emmanuel Ibe Kachukwu, offered him the job.
 
CSNAC said Mr. Adeniran, who for more than 22 years was the senior technical adviser on Oil and Gas Commercial for Total E & P Nigeria Ltd, has been at the center of a fundamental disagreement between his former employers and the NNPC over “the interpretation of the AK1 Carry agreement.”
 
CSNAC’s statement, signed by Olanrewaju Suraju, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to order that Mr. Adeniran be fired because he had recently testified against the NNPC before an arbitration panel.
 
“On the 30th day of June 2015, Dr. Adeniran deposed to a witness statement on behalf of Total E & P Nigeria Ltd. where he attacked the interests of the NNPC. It is the case of the NNPC that at the time the agreement was legally terminated about $91 million carry capital cost was outstanding,” said CSNAC’s statement. In the case before arbitrators, the NNPC is arguing that Total E & P had “fully recovered the outstanding carry cost by December 2010 through tax relief contrary to the evidence of Dr. Adeniran.”
 
CSNAC said Mr. Adeniran’s testimony in favor of Total E & P had placed him “in a position whereby his official position is in serious conflict with his private interest as a former employee of the opponent of NNPC in a pending litigation. Since the matter has not been determined by the arbitrators there is [the] likelihood that Dr. Victor Adeniran will use his newly acquired position in the NNPC to ensure that the case is compromised and won by his former employers, Total E & P Nigeria Ltd.”
 
The anti-corruption group noted that, in Mr. Adeniran’s witness statement for Total E & P Nigeria Ltd, which he dated and signed on June 30, 2015, he gave his address as Plot 247, Herbert Macaulay Way, Central Business District, Abuja, the headquarters of the NNPC.  
 
“It is the height of abuse of office on the part of Dr. Adeniran to use the address of a public institution to serve his personal interests,” CSNAC noted, wondering why Mr. Adeniran used the address of the NNPC before the formal announcement of his appointment as a senior official at the corporation.
 
CSNAC urged the president to remove Mr. Adeniran on grounds of conflict of interest, quoting the Code of Conduct for Nigerian public officials which provides that a “public officer shall not put himself in a position where his personal interest conflicts with his duties and responsibilities.”
 

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Corruption