Professor Yemi Oke, Nigeria’s Senior Advocate and Professor of Energy and Electricity Law at the University of Lagos, said the Nigerian government has made a painful but necessary decision to ultimately do what is right for Nigeria in deregulating the oil market. He said he had made a decision. country.
Mr. Oke stated this in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Monday, saying that before deregulation was implemented, Nigeria was not in a good position regarding the oil sector.
Oke spoke about the hardships felt by Nigerians after the Nigerian National Oil Company increased the price of fuel to N998 in Lagos and over N1000 in other states in a move to deregulate the oil market. But when we engage in important national discussions of this kind, we need to be clear. where are we? We were at a T-junction towards complete destruction.
“Were we doing well as a country? The answer is no. In terms of refining capacity, we were nowhere near and we were importing. The calculations of what was imported and what was coming in matched. So now we have a unique opportunity for Dangote and others to join us to change the narrative.
Citing an international example, Mr. Oke said: Saudi Aramco was in 1933, last December 2002, and not in the current fiscal year. Saudi Aramco contributed $181 billion, profits and profits, well over 60 percent of GDP. The junior Brazilian oil company Petrobras earned about $147 billion in its own currency, which equates to about $9 billion.
“Petrobras was incorporated after NNPC. Petrobras is a net player, it buys petrol, it refines petrol and Nigeria also has Petrobras. That’s what the NNPC should have done to give us all a big cake to share.In fact, the NNPC has even taken away from the national cake so that we can survive as a nation. And we had to make some tough decisions to get to where we wanted to get to.”
Mr Oke then said that despite Nigeria’s current fuel price woes, the price of petroleum products remains significantly lower than the global average, ranking it as the 14th cheapest country in the world.
“We’re not saying we should have expensive products. Of course, there are other oil-producing countries that still sell oil products to their citizens for very little in return. But we as a country are doing the right thing. “I just started doing it. It’s painful. Of course I bought fuel, so it wasn’t a sweet experience, but it was necessary,” he said.
He praised the role of Dangote Refinery in transforming the market, saying: This is a huge investment that was thought impossible at the time of the investment. With the arrival of Dangote, we can now see the body language of boas and hoarders. Things will happen. ”
Mr. Oke also called for effective regulation, saying, “From a governance perspective, it’s not just the oil sector,” and appealed for the independence of the sector’s regulators. That was my opening statement when I said that the structure we had initially was that the NNPC was an adversarial entity. The NNPC was both a player and a regulator.
“Currently, there are two bodies responsible for regulation and we need them to regulate effectively. The essence of sector governance is the independence of the regulators. I am confident that these bodies are professional. If that happens, of course, the synergies will be positive for the country. It will be.”
Ojioma Samuel Ugwezi
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