Dawha’s Agenda for NNPC

Fri, Sep 19, 2014
By publisher
4 MIN READ

Oil & Gas

Joseph Dawha, newly appointed group managing director of Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has mapped out a three-point agenda he will pursue in the short term to improve the operations of the corporation

By Maureen Chigbo  |  Sep. 29, 2014 @ 01:00 GMT  |

JOSEPH Dawha, group managing director, GMD, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has listed a three-point agenda he would pursue as the new helmsman of the country’s cash cow. NNPC under Dawha’s watch, in the short term, will focus on key areas of ramping up production by its upstream subsidiary, the Nigerian Petroleum Development Company, NPDC, to 250,000 barrels of crude oil per day; boosting gas supply and expanding gas infrastructure to enhance availability of gas for power generation and feedstock for gas-based industries. He will also drive performance management and improve core processes to instill a culture of performance and boost productivity.

Dawha stated this when he challenged the Information Technology Division of the corporation to evolve innovative ideas and strategies to support management’s three-point agenda at the 2014 NNPC IT Knowledge Sharing and Direction Setting workshop which held recently in Abuja.  The GMD, who was represented by Attahiru Yussuf, group executive director, Business Development, urged the Division to be strategic and proactive in generating ideas and deploying cutting-edge technologies that could promote the efficient and speedy achievement of the three key short-term objectives of management.

“I urge you to re-equip yourselves in order to play a leading role in accelerating change across the entire Corporation. To lead this transformation, our IT Executives must re-imagine their roles by seeing themselves – and encouraging others to see them – as chief executives of an Information Business.

“Like any chief executive, our IT leadership should bring vision, direction, and organisation to NNPC’s big data investment priorities. That means engaging internal customers on their biggest challenges while attracting the best talents and suppliers; most importantly, it means being accountable for execution and results,” the GMD said.

Speaking on his expectation from the workshop, Dawha said he anticipates “firm decisions on five levers that are required to step up the impact of IT in NNPC to enable us achieve the above corporate aspirations”. He listed the five levers to include: effective IT governance; availability and stability of connectivity; supportive technology adoption programme; pace of technology assimilation capacity; and consistent use of proven methodology.

“At the end of this one-day session, I believe the Engineering  and Technology Directorate will come out with a set of service level performance standards which we are all expected to hold them to,”  he said.

Earlier, Adebayo Ibirogba, the group executive director in charge of the Engineering and Technology Directorate, in his welcome address, said the main objective of the workshop was to get NNPC to “compare notes with the best in Nigeria on how they think, plan, and organise their IT businesses”. “Today, we are at the eve of an even faster acceleration in the scope, scale and economic impact of technology as it ushers in a new age of artificial intelligence, consumer gadgetry, instant communication, and boundless information. NNPC simply cannot afford to miss the boat”, Ibirogba said.

He called on participants to use the workshop as a platform for developing a new mindset to recognise Information Technology not just as a primary tool for cutting costs and boosting productivity but as a big business in itself. The workshop was attended by other members of NNPC top management including Ian Gregory Udoh, group executive director, Refining & Petrochemicals, Dan Efebo, group executive director, Corporate Services, Mata Abdurrahman, group executive director, Commercial and Investment, and  Ikechukwu Oguine, Company Secretary  and Legal Adviser.

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