Between January 2017 and December 2018, it was disclosed that Nigeria wasted over N3.2tn /$10bn on PMS subsidies and ghost PMS consumption.
These are subsidies acknowledged by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. This $10bn wasted over the last 23 months would have helped to rebuild key critical infrastructure and stop fuel importation into Nigeria by now, if we had done the right things when we had the opportunity in June 2015.
Part of this $10bn would have been provided as venture capital funds to private sector operators to set up modular refineries across the West and East coast of Nigeria against bank guarantees from the private entrepreneurs bankers.
Half of this $10bn wasted as subsidies, ($5bn), would have given us already functioning modular refineries with combined capacities to refine over 600,000 barrels of crude oil every day, if we had done the right things and taken the globally recommended best steps to reform our oil and gas sector in June 2015.
President Muhammadu Buhari won the 2015 election on the back of his campaign promise to stop the inefficiency, bleeding and looting in our oil and gas sector. We would have used the remaining $5bn as venture funding to private concessionaires to help us construct over 1000km of new dual tracked standard gauge rail network against the same bank guarantee. All these would have been possible if Buhari had been honest enough to totally liberalise the downstream oil and gas sector in June 2015 and unbundled the NNPC like Petrobras and British Petroleum.
Daily, I weep for Nigeria. I don’t know why a majority of us conspired to foist on us these rudderless men and women at the different tiers and arms of governments in Nigeria. Why?
Dr Nnaemeka Obiaraeri,
Ikoyi, Lagos State
END
Be the first to comment