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Mr Roland Ewubare, Chief Operating Officer, Upstream, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), says the redeployment in the corporation’s upstream subsidiary is in line with efforts to achieve the targeted growth in the country’s oil reserve to 40 billion barrels.
        The upstream subsidiary, Nigerian Petroleum Developments Company (NPDC), was established in 1988 as a wholly owned subsidiary of NNPC with responsibility for Petroleum Exploration and Production activities. Ewubare in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria Nigeria(NAN) in Abuja on Tuesday said the redeployment became imperative for the growth of the company. He said that the focus of the new management of the corporation was to achieve the mandate given to it by President Muhammadu Buhari to ensure growth of the  oil reserve and production output. The president has given us a clear mandate of 40 billion barrels of oil by way of reserves and national daily output of about three million barrels per day. Now, to achieve some of these lofty targets, we need to have a team of professionals to understand the mission and to execute that mandate. Our initial assessment of NPDC after we got into office was that many of the personnel there were not fit for purpose. They were between the combination of incompetence, compromised and sheer negligence. They have not provided the optimal level of leadership that we expect in a company of that size. What we did was that as a routine measure, we effected some changes in the leadership of the asset managers and that is all it is, he said.
        According to reports, some of the affected workers had alleged that the new NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr Mele Kyari, had redeployed them to bring his friends to run the company. He said that it was unfortunate that some of those affected had tried to misinterpret the rationale behind the redeployment. If you are getting any negative news in the media, that is just a mischievous response to the exercise directed at ensuring improvement in NPDC performance,” he added. Ewubare further stated that about 12 people at the manager level were affected in the redeployment, adding that it would continue to happen for the company to achieve its set goals. I must say for the record that changes will continue until we get the right optimal mix of talent to manage that significant national assignment,” he added. He further explained that the redeployment was to bring in a new sense and let the system know that misdeeds and incompetence would not be tolerated. Let me say for record very clearly, this redeployment has nothing to do with ethnicity, religion or geographical origin. The GMD is from the north, I am from the south. If you look at the leadership team, every geopolitical zone of Nigeria is represented in the executive team. So, that noise around sectionalism and favoritism is totally unfounded. Again, like I said, that is the typical response you get from mischief makers when they object to reforms,” he said. He called on all members of staff to join hands to ensure that the mandates of the corporation was achieved.