The Abba Gana Story

By 

Adewale Balogun 

For quite sometime now, Alhaji Umar Abba Gana, the former Managing Director of African Petroleum(AP), has been having a harrowing experience in the hands of the police. The police had severally trailed him in questionable circumstances, and in an uncanny collaboration with some individuals believed to be agents of some powerful personalities in government, had sent thugs after him. The thugs once apprehended him along Ozumba Mbadiwe Way, Victoria Island, at about 8pm. The four thugs who personified terror, overtook his car with their dark - coloured pathfinder and forced it to pull up. They dragged him out of the car and had him lie face down on the ground. The terribly frightened Alhaji Abba Gana offered the men all he had there - his car key and money, but they refused them and said that they had been sent to warn him to make sure that when he got to the police at Alagbon, he should cooperate. It was a traumatic close shave. When Gana was eventually formally invited to the police via a letter dated November 13, 2001, he was thrown into a steely detention which has since resulted in a legal gauntlet.

All manner of allegations have since been heaped upon Alhaji Gana, ranging from concealment to theft while he was the MD at the AP. But I think that those who are after Abba Gana are not sincere, otherwise, they would not have adopted the arm-twisting tactic that we saw at Ozumba Mbadiwe Way, Lagos. Alhaji Umar Gana's tormentors are applying cheap and familiar tactics to intimidate and force him to submit to blackmail.

This is not the best treatment for a man who put in his best to ensure that AP was the success story that made it a darling to investors in the on-going privatisation exercise.

It will be recalled that Alhaji Umar Abba Gana took over as the Managing Director of AP in1991 when his successor, Mr. Fabian, had run the place aground and made it comatose. Mr. Fabian had only one option - to sell off the AP in part like the Aviation Fuel Department of the company. It was actually a strike that got rid of Fabian when he wanted to retrench massively. With his appointment, Alhaji Umar Abba Gana negotiated with the union and agreed not to sell the AP. Gana was able to cultivate a good rapport with the workers who devoted their commitment to the AP and helped Gana to turn the place around. The aviation sector was revived and the workers got improved conditions of service. This was how the AP became the darling of investors. It was Alhaji who forwarded a 14-point proposal to the Federal Government and, thus, facilitated the government's pencilling down AP for privatisation.

In fact, it was the British Petroleum (BP) that was meant to buy the AP because it belonged to the BP before the nationalisation exercise. During the privatisation, the BP was involved, Mike Adenuga's company was involved, and Sadiq Petroleum was also involved. In the array of all the companies involved in the privatisation of the AP, Sadiq was the least qualified because it was a new company that had no known antecedent in the oil industry. Indeed, the workers in the AP protested against Sadiq Petroleum's involvement. And actually, in the first bidding, Sadiq Petroleum was rejected. But later, miraculously and mysteriously, the AP was sold to Sadiq Petroleum in year 2000, against the huge protest against Sadiq by the workers of AP. This was how the government's 30% share in the AP was sold to Sadiq Petroleum.

Who is the owner of Sadiq Petroleum? This is one simple question that the blighters of Alhaji Umar Abba Gana have continued to evade or at best, answer in a very deceptive manner. Certainly, Sadiq Petroleum does not belong to Mr. Peter Okocha. How could Okocha have got the money to own Sadiq Petroleum and be capable of buying the AP, after coming out from Abacha's gulag? In any case, what manner of syncretism was Okocha embarking upon that culminated in his (a Christian) engrafting Sadiq (a Moslem name) into his company? This is an insult to common sense. And many observers have since come to the conclusion that Mr. Peter Okocha is a miserable front for the real owner of Sadiq Petroleum. Okocha's pretension to the contrary is an exercise in self and public deception.

The talk has for a long time now been gathering momentum that the vice-president, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, is a major beneficiary in the Federal Government's privatisation exercise. The thinking that Atiku has benefited from the privatisation has been such that recently, the loquacious minister of transport (and an unofficial information minister), Chief Ojo Maduekwe, during his meeting with the top Management and Senior Staff Association of the Nigerian Ports Authority, had to gratuitously embark upon a futile exoneration of Vice-President Atiku. But Chief Maduekwe has not succeeded in deceiving us. Recent happenings, especially the Alhaji Umar Abba Gana's travail, have demonstrated to all and sundry that Vice-President Atiku Abubakar enjoys more than the rest in the "privatisation of Nigeria".

As this privatisation relates to the AP and resulted in the persecution of Alhaji Umar Abba Gana over frivolous and trumped-up charges, it has since been observed in informed circle that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar is the owner of Sadiq Petroleum. So, Vice-President Atiku must openly come out to defend himself and not use catspaws to intimidate anybody. Those who are authoritatively knowledgeable in Islamic nomenclature have since revealed that another word for Abubakar is Sadiq; which makes it impeccably credible that Vice-President Atiku Abubakar owns Sadiq Petroleum. But let us give Atiku the benefit of doubt and pretend that by some arcane possibilities, Mr. Peter Okocha owns Sadiq Petroleum. Now Okocha is Atiku's friend, and Atiku has once been confronted with the Sadiq Petroleum phenomenon. Initially, he (Atiku) denied ownership, but subsequently asked what was wrong in his friend (Okocha) buying Sadiq Petroleum.

Constitutionally, we all know that in the privatisation matter, the mere fact that Atiku's friend (Okocha) was interested in the AP and got it was enough for Atiku to be censored because that was an obvious case of compromising one of the principles of the privatisation. In the present persecution of Alhaji Umar Abba Gana, Vice-President Atiku's name has recurred severally in police circles that every reasonable observer should have a cause to be concerned. Nigerians deserve to be told the reason why Vice-President Atiku, through Sadiq Petroleum and Mr. Peter Okocha, wants the head of Alhaji Umar Abba Gana. The police's charges against Alhaji Gana have been shown to be untrue, and I think that by my intervention here, those who have the details of the truth should come out and reveal them to save an innocent man from being destroyed by the powerful interests of Sadiq Petroleum and the privatised AP.