The threat pierced through Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu’s skin like a dagger. His tormentor sounded drunk on phone; not with that drunkenness of liquor which makes men dense and weepy. But with adrenaline drunkenness, which makes a man violent as a mugger, frightening as an armed robber, and deadly as a hit man. The man who threatened Nigeria’s Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, was unnaturally menacing and vicious.
By the time he was done with his threat, Kachikwu was severely rattled but he shrugged it off with a smile. The petroleum minister understood that such ugly incidents unfortunately constitutes the downside of his current office – despite the perks and honour it bestows on him.
Kachikwu recently, revealed to a stunned audience how he received threats from a Niger Delta militant. He made the disclosure while lamenting militants’ attacks on oil installations, at the federal government’s town hall meeting which held in Kaduna state,
“Last week, my phone number was published in Sahara Reporters and then I began to get millions of phone calls. One of the first phone calls I took not knowing who was calling me was from a militant somewhere and when I picked up the phone, he said ‘Are you the minister of petroleum’, I said yes.
“He said I dey go blow pipeline tomorrow, and I said why would you do that my brother if you love Nigerians? He said ‘are you sure you are the minister’, I said yes.
“Then he said for being so humble, I will drop the plan. That’s the kind of environment under which we operate.”
Without doubt, Kachikwu is in for some tough time as the country’s petroleum minister and Group Managing Director (GMD) of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Although he made light of the treat by the militant, The Capital findings revealed that the ugly incident is simply one of many that he faces daily in his bid to infuse stability and accountability in the nation’s oil sector. Kachikwu faces similar hostility in his bid to improve the fortunes of the NNPC. Sources close to him revealed that he is not finding it easy navigating the stormy and corruption-ridden gulf of the country’s oil corporation.
Nonetheless, the petroleum minister is doing his best to turn the erstwhile troubled oil sector around. And the indices are falling in place to guarantee a massive and positive improvement in the fortunes of the country’s oil industry.
Thus Kachikwu urged the citizenry not to be discouraged by the current challenges facing the country, stressing that the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration is capable of turning the situation around for the better.
“The reality of our situation is that wherever I turn when I was appointed, I had problems. If I turn to the refineries when I joined in October, they were not working. If I turned to the pipelines, they were non-existent,” he said.
“But I wasn’t discouraged, because if I had problems, what will I say of a man who at his age took over the mantle of this country? His Excellency, the president so that gave me a lot of encouragement.”
Other ministers at the meeting were Lai Mohammed,(information and culture), Kayode Fayemi (solid minerals), Abdulrahman Dambazau (interior), Adebayo Shittu (communications), and Zainab Ahmed (state for budget and national planning).
