President Bola Tinubu has disclosed that the country spends N2tn monthly to import petrol and diesel.
Tinubu stated this during his recent nationwide broadcast to Nigerians.
According to the President, despite Nigeria’s abundant oil and gas resources, his administration met a country that was dependent only on oil, neglecting its gas resources while subsidising the cost of fuel.
Tinubu removed fuel subsidies on his first day in office, and this led to an increase in the pump price of petrol from about N200 per litre in May 2023 to about N700 at the moment.
As a result, the President noted that his administration had invested in Compressed Natural Gas to change the narrative.
“Fellow Nigerians, we are a country blessed with both oil and gas resources, but we met a country that had been dependent solely on oil-based petrol, neglecting its gas resources to power the economy. We were also using our hard-earned foreign exchange to pay for and subsidise its use.
“To address this, we immediately launched our Compressed Natural Gas Initiative, to power our transportation economy and bring costs down. This will save over N2tn a month, be used to import PMS and AGO and free up our resources for more investment in healthcare and education,” Tinubu stated.
He reiterated that his administration would be distributing one million kits of extremely low or no cost to commercial vehicle owners transporting people and goods and who currently consume 80 per cent of the imported petrol and diesel.
“We have started the distribution of conversion kits and the setting up of conversion centres across the country in conjunction with the private sector. We believe that this CNG initiative will reduce transportation costs by approximately 60 per cent and help to curb inflation,” Tinubu disclosed.
The PUNCH reports that while licensed individuals have been importing diesel into Nigeria, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited remains the sole importer of petrol under the current administration.
Despite being the largest oil producer in Africa, Nigeria depends on imported petroleum products due to low refining capacity.
In May, the President of the Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, said Nigeria would no longer import any fuel the moment his refinery commenced the production of petrol.
However, the Dangote refinery has been battling with crude challenges as international oil companies reportedly refused to supply crude to the facility.
Officials of the Dangote refinery stated that the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority had insisted on fuel importation, granting licences to people to import dirty fuel into Nigeria.
Reacting, the NMDPRA Chief Executive, Farouk Ahmed, denied the allegations, stating that it was the Dangote diesel that had a higher sulphur content than the imported ones.
The NMDPRA boss warned that Nigeria cannot rely heavily on the Dangote refinery for its fuel supply, saying the importation of fuel would continue.
According to Ahmed, the refinery had requested the regulator stop giving import licences to other marketers to be the only fuel supplier in Nigeria, saying he refused to grant the request.
Meanwhile, Tinubu waded into the issue and ordered the supply of crude to Dangote in local currency, saying that would save the country over $660m monthly.