NNPC, Not FG Funded Subsidies For 2022, First Half of 2023 – Kyari
By Ozumi Abdul
Group Chief Executive Officer of the National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, has revealed that the company and not the federal government was responsible for the funding of subsidies since 2022 and first half of 2023.
He made the revelation on Thursday in an interview with ARISE NEWS monitored by ECONOMIC CONFIDENTIAL.
According to Kyari, there is a provision of N3.7 trillion in 2023, for up to half a year, but not a single naira of that has been funded.
“This is not an issue of using the money removed from subsidy for something else. Nigeria no longer has the resources to back this up.”
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“Government said look, we will provide the money for subsidy, it is not the business of the NNPC to worry about this.
“We agreed completely and executed that will of government in 2022, and again in 2023 – up to half year – government still made another provision of subsidy to enable NNPC continuously supply at the subsidised rate but the complication is that you can make provision in the budget but you have to finance it and that financing part of it is absent.”
Kyari further stated that there was no set band price for petrol and prices would vary across the nation.
“There is no band. You see that price in Maduguri is different from Kano, different from Sokoto, different from Abuja, from Owerri and so on and so forth.
“There is nothing like band. I think that is the error of the past where we create bands around pricing. The market doesn’t work with band, it works with realities.
“But am I suggesting that it’s the Coca Cola kind of situation where the price in Lagos is the same in Maduguri? It’s very unlikely in this commodity, it is an essential commodity”, he argued.
He said that removing subsidy will help build a competitive market, and will no longer make NNPC the sole oil importer for Nigeria.
“As soon as the market stabilises, oil marketing companies are able to come in.
“Competition will definitely come in and the market will regulate the prices itself,” he added.
