Former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, on Monday disclosed that former Nigerian President, the late Muhammadu Buhari, had threatened to dismiss him if his (Kachikwu’s) attempt to remove the petrol subsidy during Buhari’s tenure failed.
Kachikwu, who served as Minister of State for Petroleum Resources from 2016 to 2019, made this known while speaking at a virtual business mentorship lecture series organised by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board.
He recounted that his biggest challenge upon becoming Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company in 2015 was the recurring fuel queues that crippled economic activities across the country.
Despite sleepless nights and relentless efforts to resolve the crisis, much of the subsidised petrol brought into Nigeria was being smuggled across the borders, making scarcity unavoidable.
“The greatest challenge that I had when I resumed as GMD was the issue of long queues at petrol stations. Very few Nigerians realise how much of a traumatic experience it is for a minister or a GMD, who’s committed, to get up in the morning and find out the whole country is grounded. Of course, I’ll go to filling stations, try to help them fill, and try to make sure there are no unnecessary traffic obstructions. At the end of the day, every time that happened, I had no sleep.
“When I then did my investigation, it was clear that a lot of the products we were bringing were crossing the border at subsidised rates.
No matter how much I tried to work with customs, work with the ministry, or work with everybody, it just never happened. It just kept going because the position didn’t have the political or security resources to police Nigeria’s borders.”
According to him, he constantly appealed to Buhari to approve a review of pump prices to halt the losses, but the President, who maintained a populist position, strongly opposed any increase.
“I went to the President very many times, and I said, ‘Look, I need to move up on price. He resisted that very much because of his populist-type position. Eventually, he said, ‘Okay, you know what? I’ll leave you to take the risk. If you take the risk and it works, fine. If it doesn’t work, I fire you.’ That’s all well and good for me. And I did,” Kachikwu said.
The former minister explained that he implemented what he called ‘price modulation’, a policy that allowed petrol prices to reflect international market trends.
He noted that the slight adjustment not only removed the subsidy but also eliminated fuel queues nationwide within 48 hours.
“That singular price adjustment removed the subsidy. There was no more subsidy. And within 48 hours, magically, every queue in the country stopped. It never happened again until I left. So, that was how I could, at least, sleep better, and the government was willing to make more money,” he added.
Kachikwu further stated that he declined to pay billions of naira in outstanding subsidy arrears he inherited, stressing that most of the claims could not be verified.
“We didn’t pay the arrears of subsidy because my position was that I could not audit the transparency of the subsidy claims. So, I preferred not to deal with those issues,” he said.
He maintained that the subsidy removal under President Bola Tinubu was inevitable but argued it should have been backed with clear plans for refineries, infrastructure, transporters, and oil-producing communities.
