Why Nigeria imports Fuel

Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday July 1, 2014 at 16:22:42:

Nigeria as a Country is the 7th largest producer of crude oil in the world. Nigeria is the highest producer of crude oil in Africa and a top member of the Organization of Oil Exporting Countries also known as OPEC. Over 5 million barrels of crude oil are export from Nigeria on daily basis and there are rightly over 3 refineries in the country.

The question now is, with all these facts mentioned above, why does Nigeria still import fuel into the country? In fact over 70 % of the fuel and other fuel related products we use in Nigeria are imported from other Countries, why does Nigeria import fuel into the country.

The reason why Nigeria imports fuel into the country is because, despite the fact that I mentioned above that we have over 3 refineries in the country, the truth is as of now, none of the refineries are functional. They are all in very poor state and none functional; in fact I can remember vividly that something in the beginning of 2012 that subsidy was removed on fuel, so that the money will be used to work on the refineries. The removal of subsidy on fuel caused a hike not only in transport fare, but in the general cost of things in the country, but after the strike, the Masses decided to mellowed down since the government promised to use the money to repair our refineries thereby making the cost of fuel to be low, but until now, none of the refineries have been worked on and the prize of fuel is still up due to the fact that Nigeria still imports fuel. Nigeria still imports fuel because her government has done little or nothing to work on the refineries in the country.