18 February 2016, Abuja – The refusal by the outgoing executive secretaries of the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, Mr. Farouk Ahmed, and his Petroleum Equalisation Fund (Management) Board, PEFMB counterpart, Mrs. Asabe Asmau Ahmed to hand over, is causing a tumult in the agencies.
The two agency chief executives were among the 26 agencies CEOs relieved of their jobs on Monday, following Presidency directives.
Vanguard reliably gathered that the contravention of the Presidency directive for outgoing officers to hand over to the most senior officer to act in their stead until the substantive chief executives have been appointed has created administrative confusion in the agencies, with the staff confiding that “there is no clear line of reporting.”
Rather than handing over to the most senior officers, PPPRA’s Ahmed and PEFMB’s Ahmed, chose instead to hand over to much junior officers, thereby creating upheavals in the management structure.
PPPRA source told Vanguard on the telephone, that Ahmed handed over to Mr. Victor Shidock, an Assistant General Manager, AGM, in charge of Operations, rather than to Mr. Moses Mbaba, currently the General Manager, Administration & Human Resources.
Calls and text messages to Shidock to get his comments were not answered.
Similarly, the same scenario played out in the PEF, where Ahmed handed over to “someone who was made the General Manager, GM, just two weeks ago, Mr. Ahmed Bobboi, rather than to Hajia Aisha Usman, the most senior officer.”
The PPPRA and PEF sources told Vanguard that the decision to hand over to much junior officers came from the Presidency.
However, they insisted, “We have checked with the Presidency and even with the SGF, but there is no such approvals.”
Even more ironic is the fact that the two Ahmeds were said to have been seconded to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, where they had previously worked.
The Spokesman for NNPC, Mr. Ohi Alegbe, could not confirm the development.
- Vanguard