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Former State Minister for Oil Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, has revealed that the late former President Muhammadu Buhari once threatened to dismiss him if his encouragement to eliminate gasoline subsidies during the Buhari government became backfire.
Kachikwu, who served as Minister of State for Oil Resources from 2016 to 2019, made revelation on Monday while speaking at virtual business guidance lectures organized by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Council (NCDMB).
Mastering his experience, Kachikwu said the challenge was the most urgent after serving as the Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) group in 2015 was a scarcity of national fuel that paralyzed economic activities. He remembered spending a night without sleep trying to relieve the queue, only to find that a lot of subsidized gasoline imported to Nigeria was smuggled across the border.
“The biggest challenge that I have when I continue as GMD is a long queue problem in a gas station. Very few Nigerians realize how traumatic it is for a minister or GMD to build and find all countries based. Apart from my efforts, most of the subsidized products leave the country illegally, and my office does not have a political or security capacity to stop it,” he explained illegally.
According to him, the appeal repeatedly to Buhari for a review of the price of the pump met with resistance, because the former president maintains a populist attitude in subsidies.
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“I went to the president many times and said, ‘Look, I have to go up prices.’ He strongly opposed his populist position.
Faced with a dilemma, Kachikwu introduced the policy he called “price modulation,” which adjusts the price of gasoline in accordance with the reality of the global market. He said the move removed subsidies and cleaning the queue throughout the country within 48 hours.
“The single price adjustment removes subsidies. Within 48 hours, every queue in the country disappeared. It never happened again until I left the office,” he said.
Kachikwu further revealed that he refused to pay billions of Naira in the arrears of subsidies he inherited, on the grounds that many claims had no transparency and could not be verified.
“We did not pay for subsidized arrears because my position was that I could not audit the transparency of subsidized claims,” he said.
In the elimination of fuel subsidies by the President of the Tinubu Bola, Kachikwu stated that the policy could not be avoided but it was emphasized that it should have been implemented together with a clear plan for refineries, infrastructure, transporters, and oil -producing communities.
