The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation is currently undergoing a technical audit and review of the controversial multi-billion Naira enterprise resource management solution project.
The implementation review, which began more than a fortnight ago, was to enable a special team constituted by the NNPC management to ascertain why the system initiated to help deepen accountability in the NNPC, failed to function optimally.
According to the Managing Director (West Africa), SAP Africa Region (Pty) Limited, Kudzai Danha,who confirmed the commencement of work on the project by the technical team, but did not give much details on the extent it has gone so far with the assignment.
“Yes, we (SAP West Africa) were invited by NNPC to help review the deployment of the system,” Mr. Danha said.
What they (NNPC) want them to do is to ascertain why the entire system is not working the way it is supposed to.”
But a source from the NNPC said the exercise was to enable the team find out the loopholes in the system, particularly what was responsible for it not to function like similar systems by other companies.
“The team was asked to review the implementation of the entire SAP deployment right from inception and identify areas in the system that could be updated to align with the demands of the latest technology systems,” the source said.
The SAP Enterprise Resources Planning was initiated in May 15, 2007 by the then Olusegun Obasanjo administration to help promote transparency in the operations of the NNPC as part of the overall reform agenda in the country’s oil and gas industry.