Nigeria’s refineries would’ve been working if subsidy was removed in 2011 – Federal Lawmaker

A federal lawmaker, Chris Azubogu has described the sustenance of petroleum subsidy as the bane of Nigeria’s economy, saying it was unfortunate that the country did not pull out of it since 2011.

Mr Azubogu, a House of Representative member from Anambra State stated this Thursday on Focus Nigeria, a programme aired by the Africa Independent Television.

Nigeria’s President, Bola Tinubu had during his swearing into office on 29 May declared that petroleum subsidy was over, a development that has seen the price of petrol and transport fare triple within a week.

The price of a litre of petrol has gone up from N189 to N540, the largest margin in decades leaving Nigerians struggling to meet their needs with some unable to pay their way to work.

But Mr Azubogu, a three time member of the House of Representatives said what Nigerians are going through now as a result of subsidy removal would have been history if it was done since 2011, a statement that suggests he was blaming past leaders of the country for not removing subsidy before now.

According to him, the country had more economic capacity to have sustained the impact of subsidy removal in 2011 than now.

“It would have been much cheaper to co-locate new refineries with the old ones and we would have been producing enough (petrol). We would have doubled our refining capacity and would have been exporting and capturing the sub-Saharan markets.

“These are the things we needed to have looked at. We have gas wasted. We can do gas to energy and sell power and once we do that our financial sector would start funding real sectors from agriculture to manufacturing to value addition and once we do that our population becomes our strength.

“Our population is youthful and energetic, that’s why you can see the rise in crimes because the youthful population are not being soaked into where they need to be because if you soak them into the productive sector there would be less crime,” he said.

He said it was “embarrassing and shameful” that after 60 years of oil exploration the country cannot refine petrol and added that having resources without processing or adding value to it “makes no meaning” to him.

“In the last 12 to 14 years we’ve been depending on the importation of fuel and paying subsidies. These are wastages. These are avenues of inefficiency and loss of revenue so you can’t plug it. It’s shameful that after over 60 years of exploration we can’t refine fuel. It is not rocket science.” he said.