This is the question that a majority of Cameroonian public opinion is asking, at a time when a letter from the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SNH, also SGPR, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, announces a board of directors relocated to the Unity Palace on July 24, 2024.
After the missed board meeting on July 17, 2024, the Chairman of the Board has doubled down by inviting stakeholders to take part in a new board meeting scheduled for the coming days. “Mr. Administrator, I have the honor to inform you that the extraordinary session of the SNH board of directors, initially scheduled for Wednesday, July 17, 2024, is rescheduled for Wednesday, July 24, 2024 at 2 p.m., in room 8324 of the general secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic, following the same agenda,” we can read in the correspondence sent by Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh to administrator Jules Mana Nschwangele.
To the question of what are the motives for this change of date and location. We learn that the scenario experienced on July 17, 2024 at the SNH headquarters building determines the x factor. Indeed, according to some indiscretions, the extraordinary session of July 17, 2024 could not be held. And for good reason, the current managing director of SNH, Adolphe Moudiki, is said to have ordered that the company’s doors be closed, thus restricting access to the site to the administrators of the National Hydrocarbons Company.
If the attitude of the ADG is questionable, the prospect of his possible replacement at the head of this public company where he has reigned supreme for 31 years is already a done deal. Internal confidences within the structure indicate that Adolphe Moudiki does not seem opposed to leaving, but it is the fact of not having been previously informed of such a project that would have angered him.
While the average Cameroonian wonders “since when should we inform a public affairs manager of a departure?” We learn from sources close to the case that Joseph Dipepa’s profile would be in pole position to replace the current Adg. However, for his part, Adolphe Moudiki nourishes the ambition of being succeeded by Igor Emmanuel Soya Bissaya, his number 2 advisor. Who seems to have gained ground since the signing on March 6, 2024, of a service note which gives him a slightly more important role within the most powerful public company in Cameroon.
Although observers note this succession conflict between the ADG and the PCA of SNH; the two men have been at odds for several years now. If on April 19, 2023, SNH signed an agreement with the British Savannah Energy for the purchase of 10% of the assets claimed by this company in the Cameroon Oil Transportation Company (Cotco), a company responsible for managing more than 90% of the Chad-Cameroon pipeline built on Cameroonian territory. In the process, and after a diplomatic crisis that the agreement had created, the Minister of State, SGPR and Chairman of the Board of Directors of SNH, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh acted on the freezing of the agreement at the end of a board of directors chaired by him, on June 13, 2023.
Although the meeting of April 26, 2023 between Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and the Chadian Head of State, Mahamat Idriss Deby Itno, restored the warmth of diplomatic relations on the Yaoundé-Ndjamena axis. Between the PCA and the ADG, the idyll was put to the test once again, due to the exposure of the Glencore scandal in particular. Indeed, if by an official press release, Adolphe Moudiki brought to the attention of national and international public opinion that the SNH was neither remotely nor closely associated with corrupt practices as strictly prohibited by its Internal Regulations. The conviction in November 2022 of the Anglo-Swiss trader Glencore had redistributed the cards. Not only had the group admitted to having distributed bribes worth 7 billion CFA francs to certain officials of SNH and Sonara, even more, Adolphe Moudiki found himself facing a pill that had become difficult to swallow; he who had nevertheless been assured that such dangerous practices could not find their place within his administration.
Disappointed, Adolphe Moudiki, via a letter addressed to the President of the Republic, Paul Biya, had expressed his wish to see an investigation opened into the involvement of SNH executives in the Glencore affair. A wish that has also materialized with a recent instruction given to the Minister of Justice, Keeper of the Seals, Laurent Esso by the Cameroonian Head of State for the purpose of collaboration with the British justice system so that the names of Cameroonian officials involved in the scandal of bribes paid by the Anglo-Swiss, Glencore, are known.
Moreover, the crisis within the National Hydrocarbons Company has not yet revealed all its secrets. Between closing the doors to the members of the board of directors, relocation of work to the services of the general secretariat of the presidency of the Republic, war of positioning of the respective pawns without forgetting the Glencore affair which divides; the work of July 24, 2024 in Etoudi could result either in a status quo or pave the way for the establishment of a new management at the head of the National Hydrocarbons Company.
