A TALE OF TWO CORPORATIONS
By Nick Dazang
Permit me the indulgence of parodying the title of Charles Dickens’s hugely successful book, A TALE OF TWO CITIES, to herald this discourse. Recall that Dickens’s book, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution, was published in 1859.
Fast forward to 2025. This writer would like to call our attention to two corporate behemoths. One is a roaring success and a study in functionality while the other is, alas, an abject and woeful story of dysfunction.
The corporations being referenced are: ARAMCO and NNPC LTD. ARAMCO is an acronym for the Saudi Arabian Oil Company. It is a majority, state-owned petroleum and gas company. A cursory look at its ownership shows that the government of Saudi Arabia has 82.19% of its shares; a Public Investment Fund has 12%; while Sinabil has 4%.
In December 2019 when ARAMCO’s shares announced trading on the Saudi Exchange, the shares gave the company a market capitalization of $1.88 trillion. As at 2024, ARAMCO was ranked the fourth largest company in the world by revenue. That same year, the company raked in a revenue of $480.446 billion. It garnered a profit/net income of $106.246 billion. It is the profit ARAMCO has been raking in that is driving the aggressive transformation of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia into an infrastructure and tourist marvel.
Contrast this success story with that of our Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd. The company’s founding was inspired by the discovery of oil in commercial quantity at Oloibiri, Bayelsa State, in 1956. This discovery led, inexorably, to the establishment of the Nigerian National Oil Corporation(NNOC) in 1971. In the same year, Nigeria joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries(OPEC) as its tenth member. Following the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act(PIA) in 2021, the NNPC was incorporated into a limited liability company, hence its adding the suffix, LIMITED, to its name.
Like most government organizations, the NNPC Ltd began on a good and sound footing. It was studded with professionals and some of Nigeria’s best and brightest. But in the course of its checkered history, its values were whittled at. Its ranks were filled with mediocre staff who set their sights on lucre. Its operations became opaque. At one point, it reportedly could not return a kobo to the national till.
What is sordid is that until the advent of the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Plant in 2023, Nigeria had the dubious distinction of being the only OPEC member which refined its petroleum products abroad and imported same which it then vended to customers. It could not even meet the paltry daily quota approved for it by OPEC.
Even more sordid and scandalous is the repairs and Turn Around Maintenance(TAM) of its refineries at Kaduna, Warri and PortHarcourt which were said to have been effected between 2010 and 2024. Humongous sums were “invested”. By the government’s accounting, not less than $20 billion was sank in the TAM and repairs of these refineries. Yet as I write, none of them is in fine fettle or working optimally.
The magnitude of this scandal can only be gleaned against the backdrop of the Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Plant which produces 650, 000 barrels per day. The Dangote Refinery and Petrochemical Plant was constructed between 2016 and 2023, in less than the timeframe in which these repairs were allegedly effected. What is more, it was constructed with about the same amount that was used to “repair” these refineries.
What is hideous is that this huge amount, which went through a rat hole, could have been deployed to address some of the country’s pressing concerns such as our decrepit infrastructure, schools or broken health system. Or indeed it could have been used to fund startups and small and medium businesses, thereby creating jobs for millions of our youths.
It is not enough to suggest, as the National Assembly did, that those who superintended these repairs should merely account or explain away these expenditures. There should be serious consequences for such bad behavior.
After all, it is being alleged that those who supervised these repairs knew before hand that these refineries were obsolete and that they were beyond salvage. Regardless, they reportedly proceeded with gusto probably because there was something in it for them.
In other countries, such willful and wicked behavior will be construed or taken as an act of treason and its perpetrator(s) is/are hanged. Perhaps this the reason for which state-owned companies in other climes such as Saudi Arabia and China work optimally well.
Unfortunately, in Nigeria, instead of those who see public investments as mere conduits to be salted of money or dismembered, to be named, prosecuted and punished, they are canonized and lionized. Some of them are rewarded with political appointments or chieftaincy titles, which they would have paid for in lieu, with the proceeds of their fraud.
The examples of Saudi Arabia and China show, crystal clearly, that it is preposterous to conclude that enterprises can only be ran by private individuals and that the better way to go is either to auction non-performing businesses to private individuals or to outsource their running to them.
Our sordid circumstance calls for an urgent overhaul of our values and our being informed, always, by patriotism and the national interest. The new leadership of the NNPC LTD, led by the Group Chief Executive Officer, Bayo Bashir Ojulari, should set the tone. It should return the company, not only to profitability, but to its core values of transparency and integrity. These uplifting values were trodden underfoot in that company’s locust years to Nigeria’s undoing.
