The Executive Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, on Thursday said that the Federal Government has failed in the oil and gas sector and should get out of the business.
The governor spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on the occasion of the seventh edition of KadInvest, an annual event organised by the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency.
Speaking on the theme of this year’s KadInvest, ‘Building a Resilient Economy’, El-Rufai said whatever the government manages turns out bad and noted that the sectors doing well in the country like entertainment, telecoms, fintech and others have no government involvement.
He said nothing has changed with the commercialisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company in July 2022, adding that NNPC is Nigeria’s biggest problem and should be privatised.
He said though the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari, is trying his best, the company has failed and has no business in the sector.
The governor cited an example of the Nigerian Telecommunications, which achieved nothing until the private sector came in and revolutionalised the telecoms sector.
“I am giving this example so that when I say government should get out of oil and gas, people should not think it is crazy. It is not. There is no reason why the Nigerian Government should still be in the oil and gas sector. It should just get out, it has failed. By every measure it has failed,” El-Rufai noted.
“This year, NNPC has not brought N20,000 to the federation account. We are living on taxes. It is PPTs, royalties, income tax and VAT that is keeping this country going because NNPC claims that subsidy has taken all the oil revenues. I don’t believe it.”
“So, the government should sell everything in oil and gas sector. The government should get out of everything that is left of electricity, leave it to the private sector, create the environment, the money will come. We did it in the telecoms sector.”
“Nothing has changed, it just a change in name with limited at the end.”
“Nothing has changed, they are still taking our money, declaring profit that we don’t see the dividends,” he stated.