If Only Nigeria Knows How Tinubu Rescued Us From The Monumental Fraud Called Oil Subsidy

By Hon. Rotimi Makinde – Insider’s Account_

If only Nigeria knows how President Bola Ahmed Tinubu rescued Nigerians from the oil subsidy regime, every Nigerian will stand and thank him every morning.

Oil subsidy was not a policy. It was a monumental fraud. A national organized crime.

I write not as a politician, but from the perspective of an insider. I served this country as a staff of NNPC for 20 solid years. I was an accountant saddled with accounting for petroleum product sales from my desk in Pipeline and Products Marketing Company, PPMC, at Ibadan Depot. For 20 years, I saw the books. I saw the lies.

I also write as a former member of the House of Representatives. I served as a member of the Downstream Petroleum Committee, a member of the Finance Committee, a member of the Subsidy Probe Committee of 2012, and above all, a member of the Petroleum Industry Bill Committee of the 7th Assembly.

All these exposures and responsibilities availed me the opportunity to arrive at one painful truth: this country’s oil and gas industry operated under a very corrupt environment, shrouded in a very severe manner that injured the nation deeply.

The system of the subsidy regime lied about everything. They lied about production cost. They lied about importation. They lied about landing cost and its poor cost template. There were a lot of lies in storage and consumption figures. Nigeria was consuming 30 million litres on paper, but on the ground, half of it was going across our borders to Benin, Niger, Togo, Cameroon and Ghana. We were subsidizing the consumption of petroleum products for mostly our neighbouring countries while Nigerians suffered scarcity.

We were borrowing to import what we had. We were paying debts we did not consume. The huge debt encountered during the subsidy regime almost collapsed our economy. Banks were making trillions from subsidy claims. One man would bring one ship and claim for three. Depot owners were collecting subsidy for products that never left their tanks.

That is why I say, the best thing that ever happened to this oil and gas industry is the bold step taken by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on May 29, 2023 when he said “Subsidy is gone”.

Only a courageous leader with full understanding of the cartel can do that. Others before him knew the truth but lacked the courage.

If there are any counter voices now calling for the return of subsidy, it can only mean one thing: the cartels are fighting back. It will not augur well for us as a nation if we listen to them. Those championing the return of subsidy either lack the knowledge or exposure to how this country was subsidizing other countries, or they are direct beneficiaries of the fraud.

Let me be clear: Nigerians were never the beneficiaries of subsidy. The cartels were. Nigerians were only benefiting from cheap smuggled product scarcity, long queues, and national debt.

Of course, the need to overhaul the administration of the post-subsidy regime cannot be over-emphasized. Government must ensure that the savings from subsidy are well managed, that refineries work, that CNG and other palliatives reach the real poor, and that the downstream is well regulated.

But to return to subsidy? Never. That will be returning to Egypt after God has already taken us through the Red Sea.

President Tinubu has taken the hard road, the right road. History will vindicate him.

Hon. Rotimi Makinde, former PPMC Staff (20 years, Ibadan Depot) and former Member, House of Representatives, writes from the Source.