Senator Dan Etete aka Chief Dauzia Loya Etete, politician, technocrat, statesman and a former Minister of Petroleum Resources recently clocked 80.
Senator Dan Etete aka Chief Dauzia Loya Etete, politician, technocrat, statesman and a former Minister of Petroleum Resources recently clocked 80.
The elder statesman chose to celebrate the landmark birthday with Ijaw nation even as some expatriate acquaintances chose to integrate themselves into the birthday celebrations.
As the Ndagbudu Keme Keni of Izon-Ibe in Bayelsa State, Etete is described by the Niger Delta people as a towering national figure who is one of the pioneers of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry and who has remained an untiring champion of economic empowerment for the Niger Delta people and whose tenure as oil minister laid the ground work for indigenous participation in the oil and gas sector.
But this is not how other Nigerians will remember him.
He was convicted of money laundering in the year 2007 and sentenced to three years imprisonment with a fine of 300,000 euros (about $440,000 at that time) by the French government for money laundering.
Later on he was pardoned by the French government in the year 2014.
In 2011, as a former Minister of Petroleum under military dictator General Sani Abacha, Etete allegedly facilitated the transfer of payment of $1.1 billion to Malabu Oil and Gas. Malabu was allegedly set up in 1998 by Etete using a false identity so as to allegedly award himself a lucrative oil block, OPL 245, for which he allegedly paid only $2 million of the $20 million legally required by the state.
Dan Etete, who is now retired, continues to contribute to the empowerment and upliftment of his people as an elder statesman.
