Buhari: One of the problems I have,
other than the military, is the
petroleum industry where I served
for three and a half years under
General Obasanjo. When people start
talking about this subsidy I honestly
get confused. I will tell you this, and
I hope it will answer what you want
to know. Back then we had a refinery
in Port Harcourt, which was refining
30,000 barrels a day of Nigerian
crude.
Later, it was upgraded to refine
100,000 barrels a day. Another
refinery was built in Port Harcourt
to refine 150,000 barrels per day of
Nigerian crude. So, Port Harcourt
alone had the capacity to refine
250,000 barrels per day of Nigerian
crude.
But when I found myself as the
Minister of Petroleum I set up
another refinery in Warri for 100,
000 barrels per day of Nigerian
crude and the Kaduna refinery a
100, 000 barrels per day. So Nigeria
built capacity to refine 450,000 a
day.
Four Hundred thousands of which is
purely Nigerian crude, but 50,000
was imported. The type of crude
could be Venezuelan, which could be
a bit heavier. But the lighter ones -
kerosene, aviation fuel, diesel, PMS
of different grades could be
produced from our crude because
Nigerian crude is about the best in
the world.
If you could recall, after finishing as
Minister of Petroleum, I subsequently
became Head of State. You
remember, I appointed Professor Tam
David West as the Minister of
Petroleum. When we rounded up
bunkers, collected their illegal
jetties and allowed jetties for only
big firms which were doing
production and development in the
country, we were shocked that we
had too much fuel.
We had to begin to export 100,000
barrels per day. Don’t forget that
we didn’t stop at building refineries,
we built more than 20 depots during
my time, from Port Harcourt to
Ilorin, Makurdi, Suleija, Maiduguri
and Kano. More than 3,000 pipelines
were laid to connect them. A number
of stations were also built to take
the trailers off the road, save lives
and the infrastructure on the road.
It is more economical because each
trailer uses fuel.
We did all that in this country and
we didn’t borrow any money as far
as I know. It’s Nigerian money. From
each Nigerian crude, whether Akwa
Ibom, Bonny Light or whatever it is,
you can work out how much products
it will give you; how much petrol it
will give you; how much diesel it will
give you if you want to produce
diesel. We could tell how much
Nigerian crude cost, the cost of
transportation from there to the
refinery, the cost of refining, the
cost of transportation to the pump
stations and maybe 5 per cent go for
overhead.
I can understand if Nigerians pay
for those costs. But somebody is
saying he is subsidizing Nigerians.
Who is subsidizing who?
DT: Does it suggest that you don’t
believe in the subsidy? So, you are
not going to agree to its continuation
in anyway?
Buhari: I would like to be on ground
and find out what really has been
going wrong. Why is it that people
are doing round-tripping with the
Nigerian products and take money
from the treasury? Some people are
still in court. You know about it. So,
I’m not taking anything for granted.
But I will try and find out what went
wrong.