By Ya’u Mukhtar
President of the Civil Society Group for Good Governance, CSGGG, Comrade Ogakwu Dominic, has called on the federal government to revive the country’s moribund refineries before contemplating fuel subsidy removal.
His call was made during a world press briefing in Abuja.
In a statement, Comrade Ogakwu noted with worry that, in spite of having four refineries domiciled in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, the country cannot still refine its crude oil.
He further expressed concern that, Nigeria cannot afford to continue spending a whopping amount of money yearly to finance the fuel subsidy regime.
The statement reads in parts…”A key area of concern is Nigeria’s fuel subsidy bill which is growing faster and bigger than what our country’s economy can carry. If you can recall, it was stated recently that the country needs to spend a princely N3 trillion on subsidy in 2022. In the light of this humongous sum, we join well-meaning Nigerians in rehabilitation of the refineries to improve availability of products locally and reduce importation.
“It is also important that the federal government also ensure that the right policies are in place and improve the country’s domestic refining capacity to meet local demand before subsidy removal is implemented.”
Dominic further appealed to the Nigerian Customs Service personnel and other security agencies to mount surveillance across Nigeria’s borders to stem the tide of petroleum products’ smuggling to and fro neighbouring countries.
“We want to use this forum to call on Nigeria Customs Service and relevant security agencies to pay special attention to our land borders in order to mitigate the smuggling of Nigeria’s petroleum products to neighbouring countries.
” We are also calling on those involved on aiding and abating the smuggling of petroleum products to desist from this sabotage as the country is bleeding from all its openings and this can no longer be accepted,” he added
