Before winning the 2015 presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari led the opposition party, the All Progressive Congress (APC), in vehement opposition to the withdrawal of gasoline subsidies.
President Buhari claimed at the time that there was no gasoline subsidy and that the administration, led by President Goodluck Jonathan at the time, was corrupt and looking for ways to defraud the Nigerian people in order to benefit itself.
President Buhari is leaving the country with the highest amount spent on petrol subsidies in Nigerian history, eight years later and just days before the end of his two terms in office.
According to the Nigeria Extractive Industries Commission’s oil and gas industry reports,
According to the National Enterprise Transparency Initiative (NEITI), the cost of petrol subsidies from 2015 to 2020 was N1.99 trillion.
According to reports to the Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), petrol subsidies cost N1.57 trillion in 2021 alone, and another N1.27 trillion from January to May 2022.
The government has set aside N3 trillion to cover the cost of petrol subsidies from June 2022 to June 2023.
An analysis of the total costs revealed that the government would have spent N7.83 trillion on petrol subsidies under President Buhari.
Despite promises, refineries remain dormant.
While Nigeria’s four refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri, and Kaduna were operating at less than full capacity in 2015, they produced approximately six million litres of petrol daily for local consumption.
President Buhari, through then-Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, assured Nigerians that the refineries would be back up and running by the end of the year. It never occurred.
The refineries were partially shut down for maintenance in 2017, but after two years with no progress, they were completely grounded in 2019.
The President will leave in about three weeks, with the refineries still under construction and badly managed. NNPC announced in 2021 that it would completely overhaul the Port Harcourt refinery at a cost of $1.5 billion, with assistance from the African Development Bank. The refineries in Warri and Kaduna are going through a similar process.
TABLE – Buhari’s Petrol Subsidy
2015 —————— N316.70 billion 2016 —————— N99.00 billion
N141.63 billion in 2017, N722.30 billion in 2018.
2019 —————— N578.07 billion 2020 ————— N133.73 billion
2021 —————— N1.573trn
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