By Gideon Njoku
One of President Muhammadu Buhari’s fiercest supporters in the run-up to the 2015 Presidential election, Prof Tam David-West, says he is surprised at the President’s performance in the petroleum industry. He is disappointed that Buhari has not prioritised the fixing of Nigeria’s oil refineries.
Not doing so, he says, encourages the subsidy on petroleum products which, he insists, is a huge scam. Meaning it is corruption.
David-West was Buhari’s Petroleum Minister during his tenure as Military Head of State. Buhari was removed in a coup by his colleagues, and was succeeded by Ibrahim Babangida, under whom David-West was jailed in a most controversial manner. He was later given a clean bill.
In the run up to the 2015 election, Buhari’s party, the All Progressives Congress, APC, had dismissed the petroleum subsidy as a huge fraud, and was loudly supported by David-West, who also gave the impression that petrol could be sold for as low as N40 per litre , under a Buhari regime, as against the N97 under the Goodluck Jonathan regime. The alleged subsidy scam in petroleum products was one of the campaign planks on which the Jonathan government was pilloried.
But since Buhari became President on May, 29, 2015, none has happened . The price of petrol increased to N145 per liter and, the amount spent on oil subsidy has increased instead of decreasing, or completely wiped out – a situation David-West finds difficult to understand.
Speaking to The Guardian, he lays the blame for what he calls the huge subsidy scam; on the failure of the Buhari administration to prioritise the rehabilitation of Nigeria’s oil refineries which he reveals have a combined refining capacity of 445,000 barrels per day.
The former oil Minister says leaving the refineries as they are provides an alibi for those he calls a cabal to continue importing petrol, thus scamming the nation.
More surprising to him, he says, is that Buhari, who was a minister of petroleum, and so not a stranger to the happenings in the sector, has failed to fix the moribund refineries, to save the country from fraudulent importation of petroleum products.
The solution, he says, is to invite the original builders of the refineries who would easily get hold of the parts for a complete turn around maintenance.
In the present dispensation, President Buhari doubles as the Minister for Petroleum Resources.
