The Minister of
State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, has replied human rights lawyer,
Femi Falana’s Freedom of Information request, seeking to understand how funds
spent to keep the price of petrol at N145 jumped from N261 billion annually to
N1.4 trillion.
In his response,
Kachikwu denied the statement and described it as alarming.
“I, hereby, acknowledge receipt of your
letter of April 17, 2018, requesting for information and data on under
recovery. Your request to me is predicated on a statement purportedly credited
to me to the effect that the Federal Government is spending N1.4 trillion
monthly on payment for under-recovery on Premium Motor Spirit, PMS, importation.
“Let
me for the umpteenth time state that I made no such statement and a previous
rebuttal has clarified this. The information you quoted is both incorrect and
alarmingly speculative.”
The
Minister has been credited to have at a public function said: “It is time for
Nigeria to harness alternative fuel sources like Liquefied Petroleum Gas LPG as
under-recovery from the importation and sale of petrol at the. Government
regulated price of ₦145 per liter has hit ₦1.4 trillion.”
In his reply to Falana, Kachikwu said it
was the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), who would have the
exact naira value spent on ‘under recovered funds,’ since it imports most of
the petrol sold in Nigeria.
A
month before Kachikwu’s debunked remarks, the Group Managing Director of NNPC
Mikanti Baru had put the subsidy being spent to hold down the price of petrol
at N774 million per day.
He
said Nigeria’s daily consumption had risen from less than 35 million a day to
over 60 million liters due to smuggling.
In the
FOI order addressed to the petroleum minister, Falana queried the daily
consumption figures, which had purportedly flown from 28 million in December
2017 to 60 million.
While
stating that the average consumption in the five African countries Nigerian
smugglers are touted to sell petrol to is an estimate of 250,000 liters a day,
Falana said that does not account for the increase of 32 million liters per
day.
He said the Ministry of Petroleum Resources
and NNPC should give a true value of petrol usage, as they have spent millions
on software that tracks petrol sales from the depots.
Since
the Project Aquila Software has the capability to identify the owners and
locations of all trucks loading petroleum products in Nigeria, why has your
office and NNPC continued to blame smuggling for the drain of N4.6 billion
daily on petroleum products? How many of the truck owners involved in the
alleged smuggling have been arrested and arraigned in court since Aquila has
the database of all Truck Owners in the country? Falana asked.
On the
27th of April, the Senate described NNPC's subsidy payments as illegal and
ordered the Corporation to remit N216 billion into the Consolidated Revenue Fund Account.
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