Edo state Governor, Adams Oshiomhole on Thursday said that $30billion is
missing from Nigeria's excess crude account; PREMIUM TIMES.
Oshiomhole made the allegation Thursday when he received members of the Association of Enegies from Edo South.
He said, "Ideally, we ought to be saving $36 per barrel on the 2.3
million barrel a day over the past three years and if you look at these
numbers you will find that what we have in our excess crude oil account
should be over $30billion but as we speak, we have barely $3 billon in
our excess crude account.
"Over the past 18 months, we have not shared the excess crude account
and yet, the account is empty. Sometimes we are told they have taken
money from it to fund subsidies including subsidy on kerosene but your
royal highnesses, there is nowhere in your various domains where
kerosene is sold for N50. So in the name of subsidy, large sums of money
are being stolen.
"Things are tough now around the country because the Federal Government
mismanaged our national resources and what is being stolen, nobody
agrees it is being stolen. What is arguable is who is responsible for
this stealing. When the Federal Government and the President talk about
oil theft and the amount that is allegedly stolen is huge such that
whereas we have the capacity to produce about 2.4 million barrels a day,
what accrues into the federal government account is less than 1.8
million barrel a day.
"From the last time we had a meeting, the handouts they distributed
shows that sometime for a period of two weeks, we were losing as much as
700,000 barrels a day and that has been on for the past 12 years. I am
not able to understand why, suddenly, Nigeria cannot protect its
territorial waters because the boundaries have not changed and the
people are still the same and at the peak of the so-called militancy, we
were still exporting about 2 million barrels a day,", Oshiomhole said.
"To the best of my knowledge, there is no major known person who has
been prosecuted and convicted for oil theft in a way that reflects the
magnitude of what is allegedly stolen".
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