The erstwhile Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr. Maikanti Baru, on Monday said that when he started working for the Corporation, a former GMD, Abubakar Yar’Adua, expressed the desire to mentor him to become an executive director in the organisation.
He said he, however, had to first prove his skills as the General Manager of the National Petroleum Investment Management Services, where he had earlier spent six years before coming to the NNPC.
He described his experience working with NAPIMS as a nightmare, saying he was virtually forced to return to the place as a GM.
Baru, who spoke at his retirement ceremony in Abuja on Monday, described his initial six-year stint at NAPIMS as “a nightmare.”
Recalling the incident leading to his redeployment to NAPIMS, Baru said, “(former NNPC GMD, Abubakar) Yar’Adua, when I came on board, looked at me and said, ‘I’d love to bring you up as executive director. However, our upstream is in a shambles; almost everything goes. You will go to NAPIMS and put it straight.’
“I could recall that conversation. I didn’t like it and I told him to his face, ‘I’m done with NAPIMS. It is not meant for people to perpetuate themselves. I’ve contributed my quota.’”
Baru stated that he had spent six years in NAPIMS before going to the Nigerian Gas Company.
“I had paid my dues in Warri for five years. I didn’t want to go back to NAPIMS. I could recall it was a very heated debate with him and my friend, Ibrahim Waziri.
“The two of them bullied me. We spent over an hour for them to say, whether I liked it or not, I must go and fix that place.
“I accepted it as a challenge. NAPIMS was really a nightmare when I left it in 1999.
“In 2007 when I went there, I appreciated that they needed me. It also gave me the opportunity to actualise some of my dreams.”
