Despite President Muhammadu Buhari recently scoring his administration high on development indices ranging from security, energy, and infrastructures, Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has blamed the Federal Government for the lapses that continue to plague the oil and gas sector.
El Rufai claimed that lessons learned from the telecommunications sector demonstrated that total or full deregulation of the oil and gas sector was the only way out of the sector’s problems.
On the occasion of the seventh edition of KadInvest, the governor spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday.
The former Federal Capital Territory Minister stated that nothing significant has changed with the commercialization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company in July 2022, and that NNPC is Nigeria’s biggest problem and should be privatized.
He argued that, while NNPC Limited’s Group Chief Executive Officer, Mele Kyari, is making an effort, the company has failed and has no business being in the sector.
He reminisced about Nigerian Telecommunications Limited, which he said was at its lowest ebb until the private sector came in and revolutionized the telecoms business.
His words, “I am giving this example so that when I say the government should get out of oil and gas, people should not think it is crazy; it is not. The Nigerian Government should not be a player in the oil and gas sector. It should just give up and get out, it has failed. By every measure, it has failed.
“This year, NNPC cannot boast of bringing N20,000 to the federation account. We are living on taxes. It is PPTs, royalties, income tax and VAT that are keeping this country going because the NNPC claims that subsidy has taken all the oil revenues. I find it hard to believe”
The Governor also argued that the Federal Government should exit the power sector and privatize it in order for the country to overcome the sector’s hydra-headed and decades-long challenges.
He believes that the government should sell everything in the oil and gas industry. “The government should abandon everything that remains of the electricity industry, hand it over to the private sector, and create the environment; the money will follow.” We did it in the telecommunications industry.”
In response to the NNPC’s commercialization, he reiterated, “Nothing has changed, they are still taking our money, declaring profit that we don’t see the dividends.”
It should be noted that the Federal Government recently changed the NNPC’s nomenclature, registering it with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and renaming it NNPC Limited.