“Hope is Back for Nigeria…”

ISSUE IN THE NEWS

Good to hear President Tinubu say "Subsidy is gone".

His predecessor left him no choice really. But he could still have played politics with it and still kicked the removal of petroleum subsidy down the road. The new president’s inaugural speech made the right noises and harped on the right policy issues – enough for his supporters to celebrate that he has “hit the ground running”, a perennial phrase deployed by his political party since 2014, which President Buhari woefully failed to live up to when he took office. As Barrister Mike Ozekhome used to put it, “Buhari hit the ground sitting!”

His speech, which he summarised with the phrase: “Hope is back for Nigeria…”, promised key policy actions including merging all exchange rates for Nigeria and carrying out some house cleaning at the Central Bank of Nigeria. He also wants the sub-national governments and private investors to be more aggressive in power generation and distribution, with a view to increasing power supply substantially; eliminating multiple taxation across the board; removing hurdles to immediate repatriation of earnings by international companies; bringing down interest rates; stabilizing prices of agricultural produce, so as to guarantee farmers’ income; and creating a million jobs in the digital economy.

If President Tinubu truly wants to live up to the lofty goals he set for the economy in his inaugural speech, one important step he needs to take to inspire confidence in everyone, is to revisit the fraudulent implementation of the Petroleum Industry Act, in relation to the national oil company.

The right thing to do under the Petroleum Industry Act should have been to form a fresh company with shares floated on the Lagos, Johannesburg, and perhaps London stock exchanges. The Federal government could own a certain percentage of the equity, via the assets of the Legacy NNPC, while Nigerians and other investors could buy the remaining shares - according to market valuation.

But Buhari arbitrarily transformed the over-bloated, corruption-ridden quasi-ministry that was the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, into NNPC Limited, which is supposed to operate as an independent oil company and just like British Petroleum or Petronas, compete in the petroleum industry with the IOCs and other players. That fraud needs to be corrected, or nobody in the international business arena will take Nigeria seriously.

It is the same spirit of arbitrariness that informed the "investment" and acquisition of 20 per cent of the Dangote Refinery Company, with no explanations of how the share price was arrived at, and what due diligence was done before the spending a large chunk of NNPC’s money when its own refineries are lying comatose.

We should shine some light on this opaque transaction if Tinubu wants to walk his talk. 

- Ikechi Ibeji

 

 Tags:  Energy Nuggets Daily Publications Petroleum Oil and Gas Memorial Petroleum Engineering

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