‘I don’t know what fuel subsidy means’ – Buhari
Buhari expressed reservations over claims by the
government of subsidizing the petroleum sector. He
spoke on how during his time as Military leader, they
were able to make fuel available at all times. Below
are excerpts of what he said in the interview
One burning issue is fuel subsidy. I believe you are
aware of the queues in major cities like Lagos and
Abuja. The fuel importers say they are unsure of the
direction of the new government in this area. Have
you considered maintaining or withdrawing this
subsidy or are you questioning whether it didn't exist
at all?
One of the problems I have, other than the military,
is the petroleum industry where I served for three
and a half years under General Obasanjo. When
people start talking about this subsidy I honestly get
confused. I will tell you this, and I hope it will answer
what you want to know. Back then we had a refinery
in Port Harcourt, which was refining 30,000 barrels a
day of Nigerian crude. Later, it was upgraded to
refine 100,000 barrels a day.
Another refinery was built in Port Harcourt to refine
150,000 barrels per day of Nigerian crude. So, Port
Harcourt alone had the capacity to refine 250,000
barrels per day of Nigerian crude. But when I found
myself as the Minister of Petroleum I set up another
refinery in Warri for 100, 000 barrels per day of
Nigerian crude and the Kaduna refinery a 100, 000
barrels per day. So Nigeria built capacity to refine
450,000 a day. Four Hundred thousands of which is
purely Nigerian crude, but 50,000 was imported. The
type of crude could be Venezuelan, which could be a
bit heavier. But the lighter ones – kerosene, aviation
fuel, diesel, PMS of different grades could be
produced from our crude because Nigerian crude is
about the best in the world. If you could recall, after
finishing as Minister of Petroleum, I subsequently
became Head of State.
You remember, I appointed Professor Tam David
West as the Minister of Petroleum. When we rounded
up bunkers, collected their illegal jetties and allowed
jetties for only big firms which were doing
production and development in the country, we were
shocked that we had too much fuel. We had to begin
to export 100,000 barrels per day. Don't forget that
we didn't stop at building refineries, we built more
than 20 depots during my time, from Port Harcourt
to Ilorin, Makurdi, Suleija, Maiduguri and Kano. More
than 3,000 pipelines were laid to connect them. A
number of stations were also built to take the trailers
off the road, save lives and the infrastructure on the
road. It is more economical because each trailer uses
fuel.
We did all that in this country and we didn't borrow
any money as far as I know. It's Nigerian money.
From each Nigerian crude, whether Akwa Ibom,
Bonny Light or whatever it is, you can work out how
much products it will give you; how much petrol it
will give you; how much diesel it will give you if you
want to produce diesel. We could tell how much
Nigerian crude cost, the cost of transportation from
there to the refinery, the cost of refining, the cost of
transportation to the pump stations and maybe 5 per
cent go for overhead. I can understand if Nigerians
pay for those cost but somebody is saying he is
subsidizing Nigerians. Who is subsidizing who?
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