Are we drinking petrol, Sanusi questions NNPC claim on daily fuel consumption

Former Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has questioned the volume of petrol claimed to be consumed in Nigeria on a daily basis.

He said on Saturday that the claim by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited that the country was consuming 66 million litres of fuel per day was outrageous

“Are we drinking the petrol?” Sanusi, who is the immediate past Emir of Kano queried the “inflated” figure when he delivered a keynote speech at the seventh edition of KadInvest, an annual event organised by the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency.

He lamented the bogus amount spent on subsidy payment annually, and demanded that the NNPC be unbundled and disbanded, noting that the company should not continue as a cash cow for a few Nigerians.

He blamed the lack of revenue in the country on what he called the subsidy free-for-all.

“NNPC tells us officially that we are consuming 66 million litres per day…We are consuming more than Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire, more than Kenya.

“In 2019 officially, we were importing 40 million litres per day. In 2022, officially, we are importing 66 million per day. In three years, we have increased our petrol consumption by 50%. Please tell me, is it the population? Is it the number of cars? Just ask yourself if it makes sense that in three years you increase your consumption of petrol by 50%.

“Nigeria has continued to be a rentier state. It does not exist for development but as a sight of rent, and extraction to make those who control the state rich to turn them into billionaires overnight.”

He noted that Nigeria could not keep pushing the brink but must come back and address the issues at hand so that future generation won’t suffer.

The ex-CBN governor, who cited a data from the Federation Account Allocation Committee, said only 50% of states generated enough recurrent revenue to cover their wages, overheads and debt services.

He said the cost of servicing debt in Nigeria with the Federal Government for the first half of 2022 was N2.5 trillion whereas revenue was N2.4 trillion.

“In other words, debt service is now 108 per cent of revenue. Every naira the Federal Government earns goes to service debt and it is not enough; it has to borrow to service the debt, and then begin to pay salaries, borrow to pay overheads, borrow to build roads,” he said.