09 October 2013, Minna – The governor of Niger State, Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu has accused the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) of failing to disclose the actual quantity of crude oil accruable to the country on daily basis.
This is just as he accused the federal government of halting oil exploration in the Bida basin.
Aliyu, who stated this yesterday while receiving the House of Representatives Committee on Petroleum Down stream led by its chairman, Hon. Dangogo Peterside, on a visit, also stated that no part of the country should be afraid of disintegration. The governor stated that the NNPC was not declaring the actual production figures of oil per day and as such the organisation should be reorganised for more efficiency and productivity.
“Nobody knows how much oil is being produced in Nigeria”, he said while taking a swipe at the corporation for complicity in the incidence.
Reacting to the disclosure by the Commissioner for Mineral Development in the state Engineer Jibrin Abubakar that a committee on oil exploration in Bida had discovered that the Federal Ministry of Petroleum Resources was deliberately hindering exploration processes in the basin, Aliyu said the delay may be due to non-passage of the Petrol Industry Bill into law.
According to him, it has been established that oil deposit in the basin was of commercial quantity, saying that if Niger Republic and Chad had hit oil in large quantities, the prospects of oil in the north and in Niger State in particular should not be in doubt.
Earlier, the commissioner of mineral development had said, “We set up committee to find out what was happening after several months of not hearing from the ministry and we discovered that the letter was still on the minister’s table.”
According to him, the state cannot proceed to the next because approval was not granted.
Meanwhile, Aliyu also said that no community in Nigeria should be afraid of separation.
He said: “If some people want to go, they should go, we will survive. We are not scared of separation. The same was said of Niger Republic. Niger was the poorest country in the world, but today, if you see oil in Kano, Kaduna, Sokoto and Maiduguru, it would have come from Niger Republic. There is no way Niger and Chad can have oil and improve their economy and the north will not be able to do the same.”
However, the House Committee chairman, Hon Peterside, disagreed with Aliyu, saying it was unfair for anyone to say that the amount of oil being produced in the country was not known.
According to him, the problem was that of oil theft an effort must be put in place to ensure that oil theft is curtail.
– Leadership