On the back page of THISDAY, December 25 2005, you carried a short article about Mr. Stanley Lawson, the new Group Executive Director Finance, NNPC, entitled the New Man at NNPC. The ripple effect of that shot but potent piece has the potential to mislead your readers about the man Lawson.
To say the least, it was an unkind cut and a very uncomplimentary Christmas gift for a man who is well respected within the banking sector. He is a very thorough and meticulous banker whose track record earned him his new job. I know Lawson very well. It is not true as that piece tried to insinuate that Afex Bank collapsed under Lawson. It is also not true as the piece also tried to insinuate that his appointment by the presidency to NNPC was influenced by Chief Emeka Offor, the Chairman of Afex Bank, a close friend of the President, who has been having a running battle with the National Assembly over the Turn Around Maintenance his company carried out at the Port Harcourt Refinery.
Lawson was appointed Managing Director of Afex Bank, from Allstates Trust Bank just under a year ago (where he was General Manager) and given a specific mandate to revive the bank from its distressed state and put it back on the road to recovery.
Afex Bank was already in distress and it was because of Lawson's sterling qualities that he was deemed capable of breathing fresh life into the bank. And within a short time he stayed, he was everywhere looking for money to revive the ailing bank.
Secondly, Chief Emeka Offor never influenced Lawson's appointment. He was not even aware of it. Mr Lawson got his appointment purely on merit. It is to the credit of President Olusegun Obasanjo that he never allows anyone to influence his decisions on such sensitive appointments. He goes for the best as he has done in other sectors of the economy, especially in the ministry of finance.
The challenge before Lawson is to bring in his professional experience to re-organise the finances of NNPC and elevate it to world class standard befitting a corporation of its status.
Everybody knows that NNPC's finances are in a shambles, and it is only natural to bring in a professional of Lawson's calibre to reform the place and bring some order to bear on the way things are done there.
The presence of a close ally at the NNPC is undoubtedly a positive for Offor's Chrome Energy Services, which does the TAM stuff. But it's not just because it may help Chrome win contracts. It's because in the privatization process, Offor may have gained an inside track to becoming the owner of some of Nigeria's largest refineries. I have speculated that if I were Offor and had less than majority control of ERHC stock, I would content myself with allowing a merger or buyout partner to seek premium-priced shares from me to gain control, and then go after one or more refineries and the contracts to refine the billions of barrels of oil that will soon be flowing from the Joint Development Zone (if the Noble Drilling/ERHC bid for Block 4 succeeds, Noble has promised to have a rig ready to drill within six months). That would be a far more profitable and far less risky enterprise all the way around.
But back to AfexBank/African Express Bank: There has been a lot of speculation about the lawsuit that ended in the transfer of 60 million shares owned privately by Chrome as a US$25 million settlement to First Atlantic Bank. No one has produced documents from the case as yet, however. ERHC On The Move will be searching for those as the days pass.
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