A former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has advised President Bola Tinubu against occupying the office of the Minister for Petroleum Resources, saying such arrangement will make it difficult for the country to hold the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited accountable.
He made this known while delivering his remarks at the Bank Directors Summit organised by the Bank Directors Association of Nigeria on Thursday in Abuja.
Sanusi who was the CBN governor from June 2009 to February 2014, also adjudged the NNPC as the “most opaque oil company in the world.”
The vocal economist slammed the NNPCL for allegedly failing to remit enough foreign exchange into the government coffers despite the removal of fuel subsidy by the current administration.
The former Emir of Kano also stressing the need to stabilise the foreign exchange market, noting that monetary policies in the last eight years had led to rising inflation and economic downturn in the country.
According to him, the idea of the president occupying the petroleum minister office will make it difficult for anyone to raise the question of accountability.
He said, “The exchange rate needs to be stabilised and we have to address the fundamental question, why is there no money coming in? Why is the NNPCL not able to bring in dollars? Am sorry this is the question that cost me my job and I will continue asking this question until NNPCL fixes it up or until I die. Where are the dollars? We need to shine a light on the NNPCL. The finance minister cannot tell you because he doesn’t have a monitoring system that reports to him. The finance minister can’t tell you how many barrels of petrol we produce and export. It is only the NNPCL that can give those figures. The finance ministry needs to know how much oil we produce daily, how much we sell, and where the money is going.
“We are no longer paying subsidies so where are the dollars? It was under recovery during the subsidy era and that has been stopped, so where is the money? This was the issue I raised for which I was suspended, well you can suspend me again. The NNPCL is the most opaque oil company in the world. When I was in the central bank for 15 years, they had not been audited. We have to follow the money from production to export to return, where is the money going? We paid N11tn in subsidy and there is no accountability up till now. The National Assembly called the NNPCL to bring the documents, but they refused.
He added, “By the way, let me advise that the idea of the President becoming a petroleum minister is not a good idea. The last president was the minister of petroleum for eight years. When I was governor of the central bank we had a minister of petroleum so when I talk about the NNPCL, I could attack Diezani Madueke. Now, nobody can talk about petroleum because for eight years if you talk, you are attacking the president. We need that buffer, somebody has to be there, so a minister has to be there who is held accountable by Nigerians.”
In August, about three months after his inauguration, President Bola Tinubu split the Ministry of Petroleum Resources with the appointment of Ekperipe Ekpo as Minister of State, Gas Resources; and Heineken Lokpobiri as Minister of State, Petroleum Resources.
However, President Tinubu, in an apparent tradition of his predecessor, ex-President Muhammadu Buhari, kept the position of the substantive Minister of Petroleum Resources to himself.