As President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua comes to grips with power and how his seven-point agenda will work for the general good, he has quietly commissioned a probe into three key sectors of the economy. The searchlight will focus on two areas of energy: petroleum resources and the power sector. And then the Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) will be scrutinised from 1999 to date. This development emerged last week in Abuja, as the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) suddenly woke up to do what it could not do in the last administration: enforcing uniform fuel price, especially in the North and in some parts of the Southeast and South-South.

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua

Inquiries revealed that for the past two weeks, northerners have been buying petrol for N70 per litre - the first time in more than a decade. It was confirmed that the DPR officials had to close down the NNPC mega station in Kano for reportedly flouting the order on uniform price.
It is said that Yar'Adua, who has been under pressure to probe activities of the last administration, especially in the areas of oil, power and privatisation, has at last begun a process that will reveal some of the following, among others: Whether past management of the NNPC have been abusing privileges conferred on them to aid and abet corruption in the Corporation.

• Whether NNPC Group management office has been awarding choice contracts to firms in which they have interest.

• Who owns a firm that was recently awarded a whopping $1.9 billion worth of contract in the NNPC.

• How oil blocks have been managed and sold to who and why.

• Whether due processes have been followed in the management and award of contracts and to who in the Corporation.

• How much could the power plants the last administration claimed to have built in different parts of the country cost at the international market.

• Whether Nigeria gets value for its oil.

• How about N900 billion was expended on the power sector without commensurate result in the last eight years.

The opposition figures in the country, notably from the Action Congress (AC) and some members of the PDP that left the party have been demanding comprehensive probe of the sector, as part of the conditions for reconciliation and joining the Yar'Adua Government of National Unity (GNU).
But The Guardian gathered that the President "is more interested in knowing the details of alleged rot and corruption in the oil industry than the expediency of satisfying the opposition."
Besides, the Presidency has reportedly been inundated with intelligence about how the oil industry was abused to create a small clique of wealthy Nigerians that do not work.
It is said that some of the reasons speculated for the removal of the Group Managing Director of the NNPC, Mr. Funsho Kupolokun were from the 'spin doctors.'
A confidential petition on a contract linked to the Group Management Office of the NNPC was, however, believed to be the last straw that led to the President's memo that the GMD be relieved of his post. The contract is said to be worth $1.9 billion.
In the same vein, it is believed that the BPE chief executive, Mrs. Irene Chigbue, may not survive for too long, but not on account of alleged corruption.
As she has been part of the history of the BPE since its days as the Technical Committee on Privatisation and Commercialisation (TCPC), she may be asked to step aside, to allow for an independent inquiry, even as more than 100 "applicants" are said to be lobbying for the job.
Some media managers, who were said to have had some unhealthy encounters with her, allegedly orchestrated recent report of the sack of the Director-General.
President Yar'Adua is said to have briefed some multilateral institutions about the expediency of instituting inquiries into how the Bureau has carried out its mandate since 1999 when some of the biggest enterprises including NITEL and NICON were sold.
Most of the beneficiaries of the sales may be made "to pay more as the value may change," although international experts on valuation have always been hired as consultants on "due diligence" on the firms that had been privatised.
Reports said that in order for the DPR personnel to perform their job in the oil industry well, their salary and allowances package have been removed from the civil service structure and aligned with the NNPC conditions of service.

An energy sector source, which shed some light on Yar'Adua's style of administration at the weekend, told The Guardian: "Over the years, there has been an outfit called Petroleum Equalisation Fund enacted in 1975 that has responsibility to reimburse marketing companies for any losses they incurred from the sale of petroleum products at uniform prices throughout Nigeria. "The Yar'Adua administration has quietly turned to the enforcement of the law that sets up the Equalisation Fund, hence the new face of happiness in the North."

There were reports last week that DPR officials were sighted in the Southeast and South-South in an attempt to enforce the uniform price, even as deregulation impact promised by the Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulation Agency (PPPRA) since 2001 has not been felt.

Uniform prices of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly called petrol and other petroleum products have only been effective in Lagos and Abuja.