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Again, Buhari Appoints Northerners Into Lucrative Petroleum Ministry Agency
In his destructive proclivity for chauvinism and nepotism in a country teetering on the brink of collapse, the President Muhammadu Buhari administration has yet again gifted his misfit loyalists positions, which they obviously don’t have the required set of skills and qualifications to hold, at the country’s lucrative Petroleum agency.
According to Peoples Gazette, the political aides and loyalists of Buhari were recently given controversial positions at the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR).
Senior presidency, DPR and intelligence officials familiar with the appointments told the Gazette that three serving aides of the president and a political player in the ruling All Progressives Congress were recently appointed to take separate positions at the highly-courted oil and gas sector regulatory body.
Gambo Manzo, Abubakar Barde and Abba Dansarari are currently serving as aides to the president on political affairs and social investment programmes at the State House. Yet, they received new jobs last month at the DPR, where they were expected to earn jumbo salaries and allowances and influence lucrative contract awards for themselves.
Jamil Sadauki, a youth leader in the APC, also got a position at the DPR at the same time as other aides of the president, multiple sources told the Gazette.
Messrs. Manzo and Barde denied getting the job when reached for comments by the Gazette on Tuesday night. Messrs. Sadauki and Dansarari did not return requests seeking comments about their new appointments.
Gambo Manzo
Despite being an aide to the president on political affairs since 2015, Mr. Manzo, still secured another job at DPR last month, sources said. He was appointed to supervise the agency’s upstream monitoring and regulation department, a role he lacked any skills to take.
Mr. Manzo, originally Gombe but lived extensively in Lagos where he played active politics, is a 2002 graduate of the Federal College of Education Gombe. Prior to his appointment as a presidential aide in 2015, he worked as an executive officer at Apapa Local Government Area for seven years starting in 2008.
He was expected to monitor regulation of oil and gas activities, including the implementation of government policies on upstream oil and gas matters, amongst other crucial roles under his brief at the DPR. He has no academic or vocational training to take the job.
But his appointment, like several others similar to it, was rooted in Mr. Buhari’s preference for a deeply sectional public service.
Abubakar Barde
Mr. Barde, the Gazette learnt, has been working at the presidency with Ismaeel Ahmed, a senior special assistant on National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) to Mr. Buhari. He was nonetheless recently tapped to manage DPR’s basinal assessment/lease administration unit, presidency, agency and intelligence officials said.
Mr. Barde, who hails from Taraba but underwent his tertiary education at Bayero University Kano, was a former special assistant to erstwhile sports minister Solomon Dalung.
He also worked at MTN Nigeria between 2009 and 2015, according to a profile he submitted at DPR, and was asked to lead the unit that evaluates oil production licenses in Nigeria.
Abba Dansarari
Mr. Dansarari, another aide aides to Ismaeel Ahmed, was sent on secondment to the office of the director/chief executive officer of the lucrative petroleum department.
The Kano-born graduate of Bayero University was asked to work directly with DPR boss, Sarki Auwalu.
Jamil Sadauki
Although Mr. Sadauki, who hails from Dutsin-Ma Local Government Area of Katsina, holds no official portfolio at the State House, he is nonetheless a familiar personality to Villa officials, especially those around Vice President Wing.
A graduate of business administration from the University of Abuja in 2013, Mr. Sadauki was appointed into the elite team of the DPR’s environment, health, and safety department, the Gazette learnt.
Deep-seated sectionalism
Messrs. Gambo, Barde, Sadauki and Dansarari — all northerners of Fulani extraction — currently serve as committee members of the recently launched N75 billion Nigeria Youth Investment Fund. Yet they were still arbitrarily ferried into unfamiliar turfs at the DPR, an agency in critical need of technocrats with sound knowledge of hydrocarbon regulations.
The Buhari regime has persevered in its provocative culture of skewing federal positions of interest in favour of his tribe and cronies, despite his repeated denials.
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