How Babangida, Abacha, Obasanjo Shared Nigeria’s Oil Blocks

Published on Friday, 27 April 2012 11:24
Written by Obinna Akukwe
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The process of sharing Nigeria’s oil block national cake is as fraudulent now as when Ibrahim Babangida started the process of discretionary allocation of oil blocks to indigenous firms. Discretionary allocation of oil blocks entails that a president can reward a mistress who performs wonderfully with an oil block with capacity for cumulative yield of over $20 billion dollars without recourse to any process outside of manhood attachments. Babangida, Abacha, Abdulsalami and Obasanjo awarded discretionary oil blocks to friends, associates, family members, party chieftains, security chiefs and all categories of bootlickers, spokespersons and cult members without any laid down procedures.

The recipients of such oil blocks will get funds from ever willing offshore financiers and partners to graciously settle the benefactors, the awarders, facilitators and the Commander-in-Chief through fronts. These settlements mostly paid into foreign accounts runs into hundreds of millions of dollars according to the potential yield of the block. Sometimes, the awarder (sharer of national cake and direct intermediaries) demand additional stakes in the bidding company. The awarder sends fronts as part of the directorship and management of the bidding firms without leaving a link to them. That is how the oil block national cake is distributed to a few Nigerians.

Signature bonuses which are paid when an investor successfully bids, wins and signs agreement with the petroleum ministry, running into tens of millions and sometimes hundreds of millions of naira ,is often waived off. There is actually no waiver; rather a diversion of what would have been paid to government t coffers is paid into private purse as appreciation gifts. That is why those in the Petroleum Ministry dread retirement as though it signifies going to hell fire. No matter how little your influence, something substantial must enter your hands especially in hard currency. The nation loses billions of dollars in diverted revenue whenever any round of auction occurs.

OML 110 with high yield OBE oil fields was given Cavendish Petroleum owned by Alhaji Mai Daribe, the Borno Patriarch in 1996 by Sanni Abacha. OBE oil field has estimated over 500 million barrels of oil. In layman’s language and using average benchmark of $100 dollars per barrel, translates to $50 billion dollars worth of oil reserve. When you remove the taxes, royalties and sundry duties worth about 60% of the reserve payable over time you get about $20billion dollars worth of oil in the hands of a family.

OPL 246 was awarded to SAPETRO, a company owned by General Theophilus Danjuma, by Sanni Abacha in 1998. Akpo condensate exports about 300,000 barrels of crude daily.

OML 112 and OML 117 were awarded to AMNI International Petroleum Development Company owned by Colonel Sanni Bello in 1999. Sanni Bello is an inlaw to Abdulsalami Abubakar, former Head of State of Nigeria.

OML 115, OLDWOK Field and EBOK field was awarded to Alhaji Mohammed Indimi from Niger State. Indimi is an inlaw to former Military President Ibrahim Babangida.

OML 215 is operated by Nor East Petroleum Limited owned by Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Gambo.

OML 108 is operated by Express Petroleum Company Limited is owned by Alhaji Aminu Dantata.

OML II3 allocated to Yinka Folawiyo Pet Ltd is owned by Alhaji W.I. folawiyo

ASUOKPU/UMUTU marginal oil fields is operated by Seplat Petroleum. Seplat is owned by Prince Nasiru Ado Bayero, cousin to the Central Bank Governor Lamido Sanusi. This oil field has the capacity of 300,000 barrels of oil daily. This translates to $30million dollars daily at average benchmark of $100 dollars per barrel. Deducting all sundry taxes, royalties etc , this field can yield $12billion dollars daily for the owners .

Intel owned by Atiku, Yarádua and Ado Bayero has substantial stakes in Nigeria’s oil exploration industry both in Nigeria and Principe and Sao Tome.

AMNI owns two oil blocks OML 112 and OML 117 which it runs Afren plc and Vitol has substantial stakes in oil blocks. Afren plc is operating EBOK oil fields in OML 67. Vitol lifts 300,000 barrels of Nigerian oil daily. Rilwanu Lukman, former OPEC Chairman has stakes in all these named three companies.

OPL 245 was awarded to Malabu Oil& Gas Company by Sanni Abacha. Dan Etete, Abacha’s oil minister owns Malabu Oil. In 2000, Vice President Atiku Abubakar convinced Obasanjo to revoke OPL 245 given to Malabu Oil. Etete had earlier rejected Atiku’s demand for substantial stakes in the high yield OPL 245 and it attracted the venom of Ota Majesty who revoked the licence. However, in 2006, Obasanjo had mercy on Dan Etete and gave him back his oil block worth over $20 billion dollars.

OPL 289 and OPL 233 was awarded during Obasanjo era to Peter Odili fronts, Cleanwater Consortium, consisting of Clenwater Refinery and RivGas Petroleum and Gas Company. Odili’s brother in law, Okey Ezenwa manages the consortium as Vice Chairman.

OPL 286 is managed by Focus Energy in partnership with BG Group, a British oil concern. Andy Uba has stakes in Focus Energy and his modus operandi is such that you can never see his name in any listings yet he controls OPL and OML through proxies

OPL 291 was awarded to Starcrest Energy Nigeria Limited, owned by Emeka Offor by Obasanjo . Immediately after the award, Starcrest sold the oil block to Addax Petroleum Development Company Limited (ADDAX) Addax paid Sir Emeka Offor a farming fee of $35million dollars and still paid the signature bonus to the government. Emeka Offor still retains stake in ADDAX operations in Nigeria.

Mike Adenuga’s Conoil is the oldest indigenous oil exploration industry in Nigeria. Conoil has six oil blocks and exports above 200,000 barrels of crude daily.

The oil block national cake sharing fiesta could take twists according to the mood of the Commander-in –Chief at the particular time. In 2006, Obasanjo revoked OPL 246 which Abacha gave to Danjuma because he refused to support the tenure elongation bid of the Ota Majesty. In 2000, Obasanjo had earlier revoked OPL 241 given to Dan Etete under the advice Atiku. However, when the Obasanjo-Atiku faceoff started, the Ota Majesty made a u-turn and handed back the oil block to Etete.

During the time of Late President Yarádua , a panel headed by Olusegun Ogunjana was set up to investigate the level of transparency in the award of oil blocks. The panel recommended that 25 oil blocks awarded by the Obasanjo be revoked because the manner they were obtained failed to meet the best practices in the industry. Sadiq Mahmood, permanent secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum endorsed the report to then president with all its recommendations. As a result of the report Yarádua revoked eleven oil blocks.

In April 2011 Mike Adenuga attempted to buy Shell’s OML 30 for $1.2 billion dollars. The Minister for Petroleum and Nigeria’s most powerful woman refused the sale of the OML30 to Adenuga citing national interest. This block was later sold to Heritage Oil for $800 million dollars eleven months later.

This oil block business is so lucrative that Danjuma’s Sapetro divested of its investment in Akpo condensate for $1billion dollars. This business is second to none in Nigeria. That is why any attempt to investigate the activities in this sector will always be futile. The money is so much that they give bribes in millions of dollars. A birthday gift or child naming gift from an oil block owner to a government official could be as paltry as $2million dollars, and if the official’s father died, the condolence gift could reach mere $3 million dollars. When they want to bribe legislators, it is in millions of dollars and any ongoing investigation ends within weeks. They are so confident that with excess money they can buy up Nigeria and they are succeeding

In the name of competitive bidding, which Obasanjo introduced in 2005, Officials bring companies overnight and through processes best described as secretive and voodooist they award blocks to party faithful, fronts and phoney companies. They collect gratifications running into hundreds of millions of dollars which is paid into offshore account and the nation loses billions of dollars of revenue to private pockets.

During the third term agenda, Obasanjo was deceived that the allocation of oil block to party faithfuls is to fund the third term agenda. With the failure of the third term, the beneficiaries went home with their fortunes and thanked God or Allah for buttering their bread. Senator Andy Uba co ordinate the award of the last rounds of oil block by Obasanjo in 2005 and 2007. The then minister of petroleum, Edwin Daukoru was a mere errand boy who took instructions from the presidential aide.

The regime of President Goodluck is not showing any signs of changing the status quo. Controversies have trailed the activities of the Minister of Petroleum and many players in the Industry accuse her of demanding stakes from every oil deal. It is hoped that President Goodluck Jonathan will remember his transformational promise to Nigerians and endeavour to face the hawks in the oil industry. The angst in the air is so much that if this monster of illegal allocation of oil block is not addressed, the much touted revolution could begin all of a sudden and all who condoned this illegality at the expense of hungry Nigerians may have nowhere to hide.

The religious leaders should tell these oil block beneficiaries, awarders, fronts, brokers and all involved in short changing the Nigerian people to find means or returning all these back to the Nigerian people, through massive development projects. They should curtail their constant visits to Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem for prayers and attend to the poverty they spread in the land. They should build affordable secondary schools, universities, specialist hospitals, roads, silos, etc for the Nigerian people. They should fund talent development programmes and sponsor activities capable of alleviating poverty. The voice of impoverished Nigerians is crying daily and if care is not taken the God who delivered Nigeria from Abacha dark days will visit them with calamities untold. With the rot in this oil block awarding system and other loot all over the Nigerian nation, something worse than revolution may happen.

Obinna Akukwe

http://www.elombah.com/index.php/special-reports/10773-how-babangida-abacha-obasanjo-shared-nigeria-s-oil-blocks

Is this not a more true picture of our oil industry corruption?

One day oil money will finish or oyinbo man will finally roll out an alternative to fossil fuel . then chicken yansh go open.

blacksta: One day oil money will finish or oyinbo man will finally roll out an alternative to fossil fuel . then chicken yansh go open.

That's our fervent prayer. That day a Nigeria will see each other as a brother, because there will be no national cake to share or fightover.

Hmm so what can we do about it now, can we fight and win this war what can we do these people employed some of our parents and hold so much power they have the judiciary in their pocket they have the corrupt police in their wallets and they are settling the military while the world is even against military rule

@POST


This is one of the reasons certain moronic gypsies in Nigeria would want to go to war on hearing of disintegration of Nigeria. They will also take the lead as to gleefully narrate the number of their kinsmen that made the so-called Forbes billionaire list from Africa. I seriously do not blame both the loudmouths and the evil doers in Nigeria because the certain mor0ns from former eastern region of Nigeria aided the criminal assault on crude oil and its industry by outsiders to the eastern region of Nigeria.

olajide_07: Hmm so what can we do about it now, can we fight and win this war what can we do these people employed some of our parents and hold so much power they have the judiciary in their pocket they have the corrupt police in their wallets and they are settling the military while the world is even against military rule

Thank you my brother. I was happy to come across this write up because my people say that if you don't know where it started raining, you'll probably never where it stopped. This is also a good educational tool for all those interested in understanding the rot in our oil industry today, a rot so huge and so scandalous it swallows the current oil minister and even the current president.
If you follow the write-up, you'll see that the current oil minister only gets a mention towards the tail end of the article. She's not perfect, but when paid "assasins" dwell on her 'expensive underwear', handbag, and imaginary Vienna mansion, I say get a life. She's just the tip of the iceberg

naijaking1:

Thank you my brother. I was happy to come across this write up because my people say that if you don't know where it started raining, you'll probably never where it stopped. This is also a good educational tool for all those interested in understanding the rot in our oil industry today, a rot so huge and so scandalous it swallows the current oil minister and even the current president.
If you follow the write-up, you'll see that the current oil minister only gets a mention towards the tail end of the article. She's not perfect, but when paid "assasins" dwell on her 'expensive underwear', handbag, and imaginary Vienna mansion, I say get a life. She's just the tip of the iceberg

Just looking at it, it takes a lot of openness to be a public officer, I would try not to say to much about this, but let me also emphasise, that it takes a meaningful policy direction, and not an abrasion to go in the right direction, and like I said without anybody trying to say to much, we also know the rot in the system, but like lawyers would say "he whom comes to the law -equity- must come with clean hands", rather then going round in circles let's take just one aspect of it allocation (which I know about as a hustler) of daily PMS, AGO from NNPC depots as, of, today, my brother is into the business and I also tried so many things out, before I settled for what I am into now when I left banking mehn, I hustle sha!, it requires that before you are given allocations you must have met up with some various criteria, you must either have a petrol station, tankers for logistics support supply or tank farm and other documentation, these are the major things which on merit you should have before you are awarded allocation, and if not you wouldn't be given allocation, now their are so many of us that neither have any of the above but we go out and market on behalf of their cronies or associates if I am permitted to use that word, facilitate payments on behalf of buyers, through our banks upon delivery, and get paid at a mark up, now what has happened all allocations for the past 12-16months are given out by her "DAM" and GEJ just like OBJ, through an appointee (a Mr. Mom****-in PP**) now its given to their political associates, whom are members of the PDP, or those that they want to pay for a favour for just like ipa*d**** or have a positive baise for their relations, and that is where the first rot was exposed I would have scanned a copy of the "hard copy as is referred" -allocation, but it would seem out of place with the name of some of the organisations in question, because I also participated in sourcing for buyers for the products for a commission (I guess since my brother is involved I am) "we are called facilitators" on a local scale, they/we in turn come out and sell the papers at a mark up of between N2-N6 per litre now we are just looking for buyers but what actually is happening is once we get buyers and these products are lifted the allotee goes back and collects the subsidy from F.govt., making money from the sales without lifting a litre from the depot, and get subsidy back from F.G, now as facilitators in abj Ho**y wel* was hawked for months, int*gr*ted oil was hawked for months via vis others, the bottom line is whom own these companies and whom signed the allocation (a, mom***-name incomplete and the agent working on their behalf) let me not forget to say the above companies have been blacklist by the facilitators in abj, to the story at hand this vehicle is used to settle PDP members and GEJ associates/cronies while she also settles her own people on a small scale Cap**l oil. Now you would ask why this story because we are in the present we can't correct the past but we can determine the future how by formulating policies that wouldn't be to elitest of bujuastic only for the rich how by making things all encompassing and for people that apply for allocation to be told the reason why when they applied they were not allocated as against them looking for a PDP top short business card to attach to a proposal/profile let's stop their

^^^
I hear your story, and even feel your pain. Fight about meager downstream oil products is like fight over a few crumbles falling off the state dinner table where the main dish is being squandered with careless abandon.
What entitles any privilaged Nigerian to sole ownership of our oil well and all that comes out of it I'm not saying that there's no corruption, but let us know that until we stop polluting the water from above the whole stream will remain contaminated.

^^
Thank you and that's why I say she is not competent she is neither clean in her approvals, or payments of the said subsidy I am also of the opinion that overall administratively she has a lot to learn about because she is not working within the private sector where people want to work or work is defined, she is working within the public sector where people are corrupt and the main intent is to circumvent the system and steal looking at what she is being praised for its strictly the supply end to the Depots what of the financial end how much is been ploughed into delivering (bearing in mind reduction of subsidy) how people would work efficiently without cause A. Williams to turn into governments official PPPRA, bearing in mind PPMC role.

olajide_07:

Just looking at it, it takes a lot of openness to be a public officer, I would try not to say to much about this, but let me also emphasise, that it takes a meaningful policy direction, and not an abrasion to go in the right direction, and like I said without anybody trying to say to much, we also know the rot in the system, but like lawyers would say "he whom comes to the law -equity- must come with clean hands",

rather then going round in circles let's take just one aspect of it allocation (which I know about as a hustler) of daily PMS, AGO from NNPC depots as, of, today, my brother is into the business and I also tried so many things out, before I settled for what I am into now when I left banking mehn, I hustle sha!,

it requires that before you are given allocations you must have met up with some various criteria, you must either have a petrol station, tankers for logistics support supply or tank farm and other documentation, these are the major things which on merit you should have before you are awarded allocation, and if not you wouldn't be given allocation.

now their are so many of us that neither have any of the above but we go out and market on behalf of their cronies or associates if I am permitted to use that word, facilitate payments on behalf of buyers, through our banks upon delivery, and get paid at a mark up.

Now what has happened all allocations for the past 12-16months are given out by her "DAM" and GEJ just like OBJ, through an appointee (a Mr. Mom****-in PP**) now its given to their political associates, whom are members of the PDP, or those that they want to pay for a favour for just like ipa*d**** or have a positive baise for their relations, and that is where the first rot was exposed

I would have scanned a copy of the "hard copy as is referred" -allocation, but it would seem out of place with the name of some of the organisations in question, because I also participated in sourcing for buyers for the products for a commission (I guess since my brother is involved I am) "we are called facilitators" on a local scale, they/we in turn come out and sell the papers at a mark up of between N2-N6 per litre now we are just looking for buyers but what actually is happening is once we get buyers and these products are lifted the allotee goes back and collects the subsidy from F.govt., making money from the sales without lifting a litre from the depot, and get subsidy back from F.G.

Now as facilitators in abj Ho**y wel* was hawked for months, int*gr*ted oil was hawked for months via vis others, the bottom line is whom own these companies and whom signed the allocation (a, mom***-name incomplete and the agent working on their behalf) let me not forget to say the above companies have been blacklist by the facilitators in abj, to the story at hand this vehicle is used to settle PDP members and GEJ associates/cronies while she also settles her own people on a small scale Cap**l oil.

Now you would ask why this story because we are in the present we can't correct the past but we can determine the future how by formulating policies that wouldn't be to elitest of bujuastic only for the rich how by making things all encompassing and for people that apply for allocation to be told the reason why when they applied they were not allocated as against them looking for a PDP top short business card to attach to a proposal/profile let's stop their

Hmm. Una dey see so?

And we wonder where the money being used to fund the daily Murder of Nigerians is gotten from.
These Waters are so murky that we'all have throw out the baby with the Bath Water.

Let's no play ignorant (just saying) the sponsorship of these criminal elements I want to believe is strictly by stealing, the engage in stealing car thief, they Rob banks big time and bureau de change, and they also get contributions for their mosques they call it sadaca! if you know these guys I don't though IBB Atiku and co they are in search of more money meaning they are not ready to burn a kobo of their doe on waste if it doesn't have a direct impact on their economic power just saying