Why is there no settlement yet in the 16-year civil case on the arbitrary termination of contract between the management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the offshore company, Lutin Investment Limited over a N23 billion [$55.3 million] debt quarrel?
On October 14, 2009, exactly 12 days after he had given approval and signed off that the $55 million debt owed by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) be paid on the strong advice of his Petroleum Minister and the Attorney General of the Federation a new challenge landed on President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua’s laps. This time, it was a powerful two-page memo asking him to show courage, and to reverse himself regarding the NNPC affair.
The author of the memo was Sani Idris Bagiwa, one of the most powerful of the President’s aides, whose official brief is to advise the president on special duties.
Things had not been going too well in the country and the president was heaving a sigh of relief same day after the prolonged but bungled row over the passport renewal scandal of the former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Nasir El Rufai.
Mr. Bagiwa’s memo introduced a new dynamic into the whole process, sending the parties in dispute back to their 16 years starting point. When the president proposed that the payment be made, he hoped this would bring to closure the one and half decade of prolonged litigation between the two parties, but a NEXT investigation in Abuja reveals how the Bagiwa memo illustrates the bureaucratic manipulation of the levers of power to craftily drain the nation of huge resources through endless litigation processes, and advance the agenda of presidential aides.
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