In 2000, when we were appointed into the Board of the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, billed to start operation in 2001, one of the responsibilities we were saddled with was a review of the activities of the then Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission (OMPADEC).
This included a review of the staff complement, with the aim of establishing the possibility of bringing some of them into the new organisation.
Before then, the suggestion was that we should disengage all the staff of the OMPADEC and start afresh. But we reasoned that these were people from the Niger Delta region who, for no fault of theirs, had been successively saddled with ineffective leadership that mismanaged that organisation. We also knew that not all of them were incompetent.
As a Board, we thought it appropriate and decided to conduct personnel audit and run skills and competency tests on the existing personnel at the time. We had almost 600 of them. The aim was to pick those who were fit and proper, and recruit them into the new organisation. This led to the setting up of various committees by the board of directors. One of them was the Establishment Committee.
As the Executive Director, Finance and Administration, whatever the Board Establishment Committee did came to me first before it was sent to the Board. I was also a member of that Committee.
The exercise was conducted with professional inputs from KPMG, which applied certain professional standards to review the various competencies and the capacity of individual staff. They were demanded to submit their curriculum vitae, academic and training certificates and were at the end subjected to serious interviews.
In some cases, individuals were interviewed twice for the new jobs. This is because the NDDC was established under a different law. Again, the new organisational arrangement designed by KPMG, and approved by the Board had to be appropriately manned. So, you had to be qualified to fit into this new organisational arrangement.
In submitting the draft report to the Board, we indicated the various states of the federation where the existing staff of the defunct OMPADEC came from. We also stated their years of experience.
Then something dramatic happened when a Board member pointed out a particular individual from Gombe State, which was not a catchment area of the new Commission. He proposed that the person could not be absorbed into the NDDC. Argument started at this point. Part of the argument was that as a Federal Government organisation, we must recognise national interest in whatever we did in spite of the fact that the organisation was a specific Niger Delta institution.
I canvassed that argument. I also pointed out that even in the composition of the Board, recognition had been given to national interest or what you may call national character. For instance, the North West, North East, North Central, and other areas were represented on the Board. That argument did not go down well with some of our colleagues on the board. But I put my feet down even though I had never met this individual.
My argument, which subsequently gained support, was that if there was a deliberate inclusion of such national interest, at the level of the Governing Board, by the framers of the law that established the NDDC, why would we not also recognise it?
In this case, such provisions also existed in the defunct OMPADEC. I was of the opinion that we should examine the skills of this individual and his competency rather than where he came from. My argument was driven by the need to get on board people I sensed we could use to drive the dream called NDDC to success.
There were heated arguments over this. I must confess that the reasons advanced by others in the opposite direction were equally convincing. However, I was able to, with the support of the Board Chairman, win the argument.
Focus now shifted to the details and character of the person being discussed. He was a lawyer and had some reasonable years of experience. He had a clean record of service in OMPADEC. There was nothing in his records that raised questions against his retention. He had attended all the assessment interviews and performed well. I was justified and he was retained.
Somehow, information got to him that I was the sole reason he was retained, that I put up a forceful argument in his favour. Personally, I was driven by his service record in spite of the fact that his retention would mean taking the place of someone from the Niger Delta. I believe in competence. I believe in people with integrity—people with unimpeachable character. At the end, he was persuaded by what he heard to come and introduce himself to me. That marked the beginning of our relationship, which was not only official but also personal.
Now it was time for him to put his competencies to work. I found him to be a bold, dedicated and sincere person—the kind of person that tells you as it is. Most of the times, I bounced off a lot of institutional memories from him. That happened when I had to review cases that had existed before the establishment of the NDDC, in terms of abandoned or delayed projects awarded in communities which required new contractors for immediate execution. Such situations had legal implications. So, institutional memory and experience always came from him since he was in that department.
Here was someone who was not a Management Scientist by training but conducted himself with such leadership flair and skill, utilising basic concepts of management and organisation in approaching his work at the NDDC. Studies in management support the view that 80% of what happens in the formal organisation are driven by interpersonal relationships, formed without any conscious purpose, but which help to facilitate decisions and performance. So, he made moves to create an informal relationship with me, which I cherished so much, because it now gave me the confidence to saddle him with responsibilities that required somebody I could trust.
For example, we had from time to time several petitions that required the commission to respond to, at the ICPC—Independent Corrupt Practices and other Offences Commission, or the EFCC—Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. It is part of the challenges you face as a public officer. When such issues came, I would ask him to investigate and review them and report back before we took official decisions.
He was always effective in dealing with such cases. At that time, his family lived in Abuja. That made it easy for him to fly into Abuja, investigate the issue quietly and unofficially as though he was there to see his family. These were fruitful missions executed at a personal level.
NDDC has its own political side. It is not a private sector organisation. It was created out of a legislation that relied on politicians for approval. It was created to score some political points. You can’t shy away from that. So, the dynamics of the politics are bound to play out most times.
Some NDDC officials were most times targets of political attacks in their local communities. I was a target at some points because of my involvement in the local politics of my state. A petition against me was sent to the Code of Conduct Bureau. Unknown to the petitioners, I had duly filled the required forms and completed my assets declaration forms when I accepted appointment at the NDDC.
It was also required that at the completion of four years, I needed to re-declare my assets and fill fresh forms if I were re-appointed. I did all of these. Now, during the course of my re-appointment, I was made the Acting Managing Director, which culminated in my subsequent confirmation as Managing Director/CEO. But that did not change the fact that I had not concluded my second term of four years. This implied that the asset declaration I filed still subsisted. I was not required to make any other declaration.
Kaltungo, as head of legal department, studied the case and concluded that it was quite pedestrian. So, instead of hiring an external attorney, he decided to handle the case by himself. He put on his wig and appeared at the Code of Conduct Tribunal as my attorney.
The petitioners had manoeuvred the procedure to a point of ensuring that I did not even see the initial summons. The Tribunal almost issued a bench warrant against me. This was at a time my late wife was seriously sick and hospitalised. I was shuttling between the UK and Nigeria just to attend the sitting of the Tribunal in Abuja. It was at the most critical moment of my life.
The petitioners were very intentional. They ensured Femi Falana, SAN, was present in the Tribunal that faithful day of trial as a Friend of the Court. But Kaltungo was at his best. He rose to the challenge. He understood the illegality of the petition and was able to convince the Tribunal, despite the strength of argument presented by the plaintiffs and the interjections of the sitting Friend of the Court. Kaltungo shut them down and shot down the case.
I was discharged and acquitted. They lost. We won.
This was one of the high points of my love for Kaltungo. He took it upon himself to pursue that case, not just because he was a staff of the NDDC where I worked, but because we were friends. In addition, he saved money for the Commission. I was sued in my capacity as the Managing Director of the Commission.
Ordinarily, he would have preferred to hire a lawyer, preferably a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and the Commission would have paid for it. But he stepped into the show and conquered.
Another experience was when something that appeared to be fraudulent in their department was discovered. As an accountant and a banker, I had different ways of keeping track of financial transactions. Every weekend, the Accounts department must balance the books of the Commission.
All transactions (receipts and payments) of the week are captured and a copy forwarded to my system for update. Over the weekend, I will study all the transactions and raise questions where necessary. But the most important thing was that I would be able to know at a glance everything that happened that week. In addition, I kept records of every payment approved by me.
The software we installed was so robust that we were able to track on daily basis, everything we did. So, as Executive Director, Finance and Admin, I knew I had made this particular payment. But then, another request for the same payment came, in another file. It was brought to me directly by the Director of Legal, at the time. I do not want to mention names, because it’s in the past. I was like: wait a minute. Drop it here. You can go. After some time, I looked at it again.
I opened my laptop to check because I was convinced that I had made the payment. But this request was done in a different form with a different company name and put in a different file. If I was not focused enough, with God Almighty on my side, I would have paid over two hundred million naira to the scammers. I think it was two hundred and fifty-two million naira. In accounting, that kind of fraud is called teeming and lading.
So, where did Kaltungo stand in this scam? I was so confident that he would not be a part of it. I had two persons in the department whom I relied upon, Kaltungo and Steve Ighomuaye. Everyone was a suspect but I trusted these two people not to have been involved. I had no reasons to suspect that Kaltungo would know anything about it because I trusted him and Ighomuaye.
By time the security agencies summoned them, they were found to be clean—no connection whatsoever. That built more confidence and strengthened our relationship, especially in the manner they handled that matter. The culprits took us to court. I was dragged to court in Kaduna and we went there and still messed them up.
I can confidently say that throughout my stay at the NDDC, I enjoyed both strong interpersonal and formal relationships with Kaltungo. It has become normal that when you leave an organisation, having completed your tour of duty, people you worked with would immediately forget about you. They get new friends and establish new relationships. The contractors are guiltiest of this.
But I must say how humbled I am and probably proud to have the crop of staff and friends I left behind at the NDDC. I have had a wonderful relationship with several of our people there. Kaltungo is one of them. They keep visiting and sending messages and prayers.
There’s a group that formed themselves into a team and called it Team Alaibe. Every Christmas, they send me presents. They contribute and sometimes buy me a cow. I still wonder why they do that. Most shocking is the fact that the contractors whom we empowered during my time have all moved on. Apart from one or two, others don’t even remember my phone number again.
Kaltungo falls within the category of colleagues who do not only retained my number, but call and visit. That is why out of all the people I met during those years, I have visited Kaltungo’s home and he has also visited me several times. That’s the kind of person he is. I know him down to his family. I know his wife; I know his children. That is how our relationship has been. There are certain relationships you build in life that sometimes you can hardly recall how they started. But this one, I can vividly recall, because of the good, the bad, the difficult times, and the challenges we faced together.
I used to work my staff, sometimes, to frenzy. When I want to get things done, I get them done. I tell them quite often that delay is dangerous. Every person that knows me, knows about that. That was why NDDC achieved that historic level of performance under our leadership. This category of staff and management worked real hard at the time. Kaltungo was one of them.
That tells the story of the character of the individual. Unless you’re told, you will not know that Kaltungo is not from the Niger Delta. He is even our in-law. Beyond the fact that he is from Gombe State, he applies himself to activities in the Niger Delta. I recall, there was a time he was posted to Cross River State. He did not like it. So, I asked him: is that not Niger Delta? Take it as part of the experience. He went.
One day, I called to find out how he was doing. He replied that it was another experience. Within a short time, he adapted himself to the environment. It therefore did not come to me as a surprise that he did not object to his daughter getting married to somebody from the Niger Delta. I missed that wedding because I was out of the country. But immediately I returned, I visited his home with some of my friends. We had dinner. We enjoyed ourselves.
By the way, since he has been too busy for me, he has graciously given me another friend—his younger brother, His Royal Highness, Usman Kaltungo. He can call me from anywhere and we just talk and laugh. Usman Kaltungo is now my best friend.
Molgengo Kaltungo is leadership personified. He is somebody that will go places if saddled with leadership positions. He has been to the different regions of this country. He has the capacity to settle and acclimatize and create impacts. Kaltungo has wide connections. At a time, he seemed to know everybody that should be known in the Presidential Villa. They knew him, too. He has such wide connections and makes friends from all parts of the country.
The only thing remaining is for me to push him into politics so that he can manifest his leadership qualities at a high level Strategic national assignment.
Timi Alaibe is atechnocrat, businessman, politician and a former Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission
Source: TheStreetJournal | Read More
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