Fresh in retirement as the Human Resources Manager, Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company, after working with the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) for 33 years, Barrister Paul Ajetunmobi, who is now a practising lawyer, recalls his experience in the organisation regarded as the backbone of the nation’s economy. He also tells VINCENT AKANMODE about his venture into full legal practice several decades after he vehemently rejected the admission offered him at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria to study Law.
What informed your decision to go into the legal profession?
Let me begin by saying that I had the opportunity to read Law the first time I entered the university, but I did not, basically because of the kind of upbringing I had. In those days, the popular thinking was that lawyers were liars; that they were never straightforward. It was believed that lawyers tried to pervert justice in one way or the other, and because of my upbringing as a serious Christian, I felt it was not a profession I should belong to.
But eventually, it dawned on me after I had obtained my first and second degrees, that so many people were being oppressed and cheated. They were being denied their rights and entitlements and I was always wishing there was something I could do to help the less-privileged enforce their rights. Those were actually the factors that influenced my decision to return to school to study Law.
That means you have not always being a lawyer…
Yes, I was not practising law because I was already in another employment before I decided to return to school to study it and statutorily, you cannot practise law if you are still in another employment. You may only be able to do solicitor’s work. But having retired from public service, I felt the time had come for me to practise law fully. That was why I set up the practice and ensured that I nurtured and grew it into a full-fledged legal outfit.
You spoke about being in public service. Which organisation did you work with?
I was in NNPC (Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation). I started my career in NNPC in May 1981. I was in full employment, got into a management position and retired in November last year as the human resources manager of the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Company.
How would you describe your stay at NNPC?
I would describe it as very worthwhile. I went round, and I would count myself very lucky and privileged to have, out of 170 million Nigerians, joined the NNPC as a young graduate in 1981. I had a chequered experience going through thick and thin. It also gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people I would not have thought of meeting in my life. The organisation has actually sown greatly into my life. They have developed me. They gave me the opportunity to go for my master’s degree. They also allowed me to go for my Law programme and even gave me study leave to attend the Law School. So, whoever I am today, I owe a lot of it to the NNPC and Nigeria as a whole.
There is this widely held opinion that the NNPC is a very corrupt organisation in the habit of squandering the nation’s oil revenue. Is it an organisation where you would hardly find upright people?
The problem is that the average Nigerian does not know the NNPC well. They have a perverse opinion of the NNPC. Contrary to what many people tend to believe, the NNPC is an outfit where you would find some of the most patriotic Nigerians. Of course, like every institution, there are certainly some bad eggs, but they are few and far between. There are many righteous and straightforward people in NNPC. I came across so many of them almost on a daily basis by the virtue of my position in the Human Resources Department, which in those days used to be called the Personnel Services Department.
I started as a personnel officer in NNPC. I started as a recruitment officer in the organisation, and throughout the time I was there, even as a young officer, I started meeting people who were very upright. And there are so many people whose uprightness I can vouch for in NNPC even now. But like I said, there are also bad eggs like you would find in any other organisation, particularly one as large as the NNPC. In any human society or sphere of life, you would always find bad eggs, but that does not mean that every other person in the organisation is bad.
Were you able to identify some challenges that NNPC had while you were there?
Of course, there were lots of challenges. By the act that set up the NNPC, the Petroleum Act of 1977, there are some legal issues that are yet to be fully resolved, which is giving it some of its present challenges. The NNPC is seen as a public service establishment, and by public service rules, there are certain things restraining its activities. For instance, it cannot just go to the bank and borrow money to do things like other companies, whereas in the oil industry, money plays very critical roles.
There are also other impediments experienced by the NNPC which are not found in other privately-driven establishments. For example, I spent the last ten and a half years of my service at the NNPC in the refineries. The head of refinery has an authority limit. The limit at the time was about N5 million, which is less than $30,000 by today’s exchange rate, while there are equipment within the refinery worth about $500,000 or even one million dollars. But by the authority limit of the Managing Director, he cannot afford more than $30,000. So he has to approach the corporate headquarters. But you would find that even at the corporate headquarters, the authority limit of the Group Managing Director is just about N50 million, which is not more than $250,000.
A refinery is a multi-billion dollar project. For instance, if a compressor has a problem and you want to fix it, you will need about $150,000. But because of the challenge of the authority limit of the MD of the refinery, he has to apply to the corporate headquarters of the NNPC. And when he gets to the corporate headquarters, even the GMD cannot approve it, so he has to take it to the Presidency for approval. In the end, something you need to fix within a week or two would be there for two or three years. And you know the refinery is an industry that has to work 24/7. Once a refinery starts working, it works non-stop day and night, unless there is a problem. So, you can imagine metals hitting one another sometimes up to a temperature of about 300 degrees or 500 degrees centigrade, and when they break down, you have to wait for approval to repair or replace them. That is why we have the challenge of not having regular turnaround maintenance in NNPC. Refineries work non-stop for one or two years. So, by the statutes, turnaround maintenance is supposed to be done every two years. But you have a situation where there will not be turnaround maintenance for five, seven or ten years. The machines are bound to break down.
Apart from that, those who have no knowledge of the industry are given contracts by the powers-that-be to supply the equipment. The contracts for materials like the caustic soda or the acid they use in refining crude oil are given to people who have no knowledge of the industry because of the ‘Nigerian factor’. The corruption in the system is really impacting negatively on the refineries, but the staff and management of the NNPC are being blamed for it.
Is it really about perception? There was a report recently, for instance, that the NNPC generated about N8 trillion in three years and spent close to half of it…
That is another instance of misconception. The average Nigerian has a wrong conception of how the organisation is run. By the act that set up the NNPC, it has a mandate that whenever they carry out certain expenditures, they should defray their debts from whatever revenue they realise. The money that is spent in producing the crude, for example, the act that set up the NNPC gives the mandate to defray their debts from whatever they generate as revenue. But the average Nigerian does not understand this. The other time, they said that N20 billion was missing. I am not saying the money is missing or it is not missing. But the NNPC has the mandate that when it is spending, it has to defray some of the costs from the money being realised. But people who do not know would just conclude that NNPC is spending the nation’s money or it is corrupt. That, however, is not to say that there are no areas people who have corrupt intentions can exploit to do the damage. But I still believe there are very pious and God-fearing people in the organisation.
Can you recall your school days? How did it all begin?
Apart from the basic primary education that I had in my village, when I left primary school in 1968, I had the opportunity of doing the common entrance in those days and was admitted into Government Secondary School, Dekina, in the present Kogi State. Some of my friends went to Government Secondary School, Okene, now Abdul Aziz Attah Memorial College. A few others went to the Federal Government College, Sokoto. There were only three federal government colleges in the country then. So, I was in Dekina. But because of poverty, my father could not afford the school fees, which was about 15 pounds per term. Indirectly, I was forced to get a transfer to St. Augustine’s Secondary School, Kabba in Kogi State. Because my father did not want to hurt my feelings at that time, he gave the excuse that I was still a small boy, because I was just 14 years old. He also said because of the civil war then, it was dangerous for me to be crossing the River Niger, because at that time, we had to cross the River Niger from Lokoja to Shintaku by ferry. The roads were also very bad. But as a young boy, I did not like the idea of seeking transfer to St. Augustine’s because I felt that Dekina was an experience and an opportunity for me to gain some exposure. But the real issue was finance.
So, I went to St. Augustine’s, and as God would have it, I had a very good foundation in the secondary school. Luckily, when I finished from the school in 1974, I moved straight to the university. At that time, there was nothing like JAMB (Joint Admission and Matriculation Board), but I did the concessional exam that earned me admission into the School of Basic Studies of the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria. JAMB started after I had left the university in 1978. But there were concessional exams through which you could gain admission straight to the university. In fact, I did the concessional exams of the University of Ibadan (Jos Campus) in those days. ABU had just started its School of Basic Studies, so we were more or less the first set. So I did my basic studies or what some people call preliminary studies in Kano. Former INEC chairman, Attahiru Jega, Peter Agbese and others were my classmates. That was in 1974. As God would have it, by 1978, I was already a graduate. I had it straight.
How was your poor dad able to finance your university education?
In my first two years in the university, I had no scholarship because Kwara, which was my state then, was a little bit poor. So I was on student loan for the first two years, which I paid back many years after I had left the university. But in all honesty, at the time we took the loan, I didn’t feel like paying back because some of us felt that we were being short-changed. How could students from other states enjoy scholarships and even enjoyed huge bursaries with which they bought motorcycles, sound system and what have you, while we had to take loans to finance our own education? But as God would have it and because of my religious upbringing, many years after I had left the university, the loans board of the federation traced me to the NNPC through the Kwara State Government. But by 1976, I had the Kwara State scholarship, which I enjoyed in my last two years in the university.
How much was the loan?
It was N1, 300. But at that time, it was a lot of money.
Which course did you eventually study?
I read Sociology. I had a B.Sc in Sociology from ABU in 1978. I had an interview at the NNPC when I was doing my national youth service in 1979, but I didn’t start working with the NNPC until 1981, because I applied as a personnel and admin officer, and in those days, it was not easy to be recruited as a personnel and admin officer because there were so many graduates of the liberal artsHistory, Geography, Religious Studies, Political Science and even Philosophyall competing for the position of personnel or admin officer.
Why Sociology?
It is a long and funny story. I think it was more of accident than design. When I set out to go to the university, the course that really appealed to me most was Business Administration. It was not that I really knew what it was all about because we had nobody to counsel us on which courses we should do in those days. But the Bus Admin, which they used to call Business Administration, was sounding like music to my ear, so I fell in love with it. In ABU then, the preliminary students were given preference in the choice or allocation of courses ahead of other admission seekers that came from outside. Unfortunately I did not offer Economics at school certificate level, even though I had credit in Mathematics. That ruled me out of Business Administration but the authorities of the school said I should read Law and I said that would be over my dead body. When I saw Sociology among the other options that were given to me, I liked the name and opted for it.
What did you have against studying Law?
I grew up in a very religious home where there was this belief that lawyers were liars and would always pervert justice. It was also believed that once you read Law, you would automatically become a member of a secret cult. In fact, there was a day I jokingly told my father that I wanted to read Law. My father prostrated for me and said for God’ sake, I should jettison the idea. He asked how I would read Law and still hope to make heaven. Those were the things that did not encourage me to read Law at that time. Ironically, the Law I rejected at undergraduate level, I returned to Lagos State University to study it almost 20 years after I had the opportunity to do so at ABU.
How much of Jega did you know as classmates?
I think knew him very well when we were young. I knew him to be a very hard working and straightforward individual. Even as mates in the preliminary class at ABU in 1974, I learnt that his father was a top bureaucrat in the civil service of the North Western State, which covered the present Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger and Zamfara states. He was an easy going and hard working person. He eventually read Political Science while I read Sociology, but we were in the same faculty and were taking courses together. I knew him to be very upright, simple, unassuming and cool-headed. Although he had an urbane and elitist upbringing, but he related very well with those of us who came from humble backgrounds. I have also had occasions to meet him after we graduated in 1978. I met him at various fora when he was the president of ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Nigerian Universities) and we related very well.
Did he exhibit any trace of the principled stance for which he is reputed now?
He has always demonstrated that. He was a human rights activist even at that time. He was the type who never wanted the less-privileged to be oppressed. He believed in justice, fairness and equity. And he was not the type who carried his good attributes on his head. He is a man I respect a lot.
What informed your decision to later return to school to study Law?
It was much later, I think between the late 80 and the early 90s, that the interest in Law started coming up. I had lawyer friends and I saw how lawyers were being respected in the society. I also saw how they marshalled their points when their opinions were sought on issues. I saw that they did not want the less-privileged to be cheated because they believe so much in fairness and equity. They believe that the downtrodden should not be further pressed down because law itself is essentially designed to defend the rights of the less-privileged. I saw all this and I started feeling that I missed a great opportunity at ABU. Some of my mates had even become state attorneys-general by the time I went back for it. It was like the rejected stone becoming the head of the corner. It is better late than never.
Which aspect of Law is your specialty?
My specialty, in all honesty, is corporate law. It is the business part of law. Of course, if there is any case that has to do with litigation, my colleagues in the chamber can always handle it.
