PENGASSAN Seeks Kachikwu’s Intervention In PPPRA Leadership Crisis

THE Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigerian (PENGASSAN) has urged the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, to intervene in the leadership crisis rocking the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).

The national leadership of PENGASSAN, in a one-page letter, signed by its Acting General Secretary, Lumumba Okagbawa, also requested the minister to make a clear pronouncement on who is acting as Executive Secretary of the PPPRA or name a substantive one to avoid leadership gap at the agency.

The PPPRA branch of PENGASSAN has decried the deployment of a Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) staff as acting Executive Secretary of the agency.

There is power struggle between the most senior staff of the agency, Moses Mbaba, who the immediate past Executive Secretary, Farouk Ahmed, handed over to as directed by government last week Thursday and the official sent from the NNPC in the same capacity.

Addressing a press conference in Abuja yesterday, PENGASSAN branch chairman, Victor Ononokpono, said the practice of deploying NNPC staff to head the agency began in 2008 and since then, the independence of the PPPRA, which regulates the downstream oil sector, including the NNPC, has continued to slide towards partisanship and collusion.

Ononokpono explained that the workers were ready to accept any credible and competent Nigerian, so long as the individual is not from any of the companies or organisations that PPPRA regulates, including the NNPC.

Citing Part 1, Section 3 of the PPPRA Act, he declared that the agency should not be subject to the direction, control or supervision of any authority, other than the President, adding that the persistent deployment of NNPC staff to head the agency is a flagrant contravention of the Act.

While calling on stakeholders to lend their voices on the issue, Ononokpono said the union was willing to relax its protest for engagement in anticipation of a favourable resolution of the matter.