Since the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has revealed that in the last one year, Nigeria spent about N3.4tn on the importation of petroleum products, but industry experts are worried on why he only stopped at what government spent without revealing what it made selling the N3.4tn petroleum products. It is important to understand that the products were not shared freely to Nigerians, but they were all sold and NNPC did not issue a statement, saying it did not recover from the sales after all.
According to observers, none of the imported products were declared missing, meaning that they were all sold and government must have recovered its money with marginal gains.
Kachikwu, had stated at a press conference in Abuja on Thursday last week, that “The importation of petroleum products between January and December of last year amounted to about 20 million metric tonnes. A total amount of N3.4tn was spent”.
“The consumption of foreign exchange from the Central Bank of Nigeria was approximately 30 per cent of the CBN’s total foreign exchange outlay, and the logistic cost of that importation was about N1.34tn within the same one year period.”
On why the country must end the importation of refined petroleum products, he added, “The domestic refining capacity as of today is six million litres out of a total consumption of about 35 million litres, averaging less than 25 per cent”.
“In the midst of this sort of statistics, it is absolutely critical that we move in to try to end importation of products, improve our refineries and get them up to 100 per cent nameplate.
On ending the importation spree, experts argued that it amounts to huge error for the minister to think that the best way to end fuel importation is to go through the back door in selling refineries to companies that have series on concluded and ongoing litigations bordering on infractions in the nation’s oil industry after all.
It would be recalled that ENI, the Italian oil giant, were among IOCs included in some oil dirty deals whose cases are still on in some US courts with some concluded.
