Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai, said the federal government has failed in the management of Nigeria’s oil and gas resources.
The Kaduna State Governor, said this Thursday, during an interview on Channels Tv breakfast show Sunrise Daily
Describing as Nigeria’s biggest problem, the governor said it should be privatised.
El-Rufai, who made the assertion on the occasion of the 2022 KadInvest programme, an annual event organised by the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency, noted that the Company was making profit without paying dividends to its shareholders.
The former FCT minister pointed that even with it’s commercialization, nothing has changed with the way the company is run.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Company which was commercialized in July 2022, has not remitted monies to the federation account saying it was using it to fund subsidy payment.
“Nothing has changed, they are still taking our money, declaring profit that we don’t see the dividends.”
“This year, NNPC has not brought N20,000 to the federation account. We are living on taxes. It is PPTs, royalties, income tax and VAT that is keeping this country going because NNPC claims that subsidy has taken all the oil revenues. I don’t believe it,” he said.
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The governor noted that except the federal government hands off NNPC, the company will continue to perform woefully saying that whatever government manages fails.
Citing the telecomms, entertainment, fintech as sectors that were doing well without government involvement, El-Rifai insisted that it was time the government leave the oil and gas sector for the private to manage.
He said: “I am giving this example so that when I say government should get out of oil and gas, people should not think it is crazy; it is not. There is no reason why the Nigerian Government should still be in the oil and gas sector. It should just get out, it has failed. By every measure it has failed.”
He also called for the total privatisation of the power sector saying the government should get out of the sector.
“The government should get out of everything that is left of electricity, leave it to the private sector, create the environment, the money will come. We did it in the telecoms sector,” he said.
