TheCable

Taiwo Oyedele, chairman of the presidential committee on fiscal policy and tax reforms, says Nigerians should come together to demand that the nation’s refineries remain moribund.

Speaking on Monday at ‘The Platform’, an event organised by The Covenant Nation, Oyedele argued that the refineries should be sold.

“Nigerians would say if only our refineries are working, then we’ll be fine. Nothing can be farther from the truth than that. In fact, Nigerians should come together and say please make sure that our refineries don’t work. We should sell them,” the former Africa tax leader at PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said.

“Maybe you’ve not been following the story, the national assembly said we have spent over N10 trillion maintaining our refineries even when they have not produced anything.”

Oyedele quoted Mele Kyari, the group chief executive officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited, as saying that the company had to shut down the refineries that were producing, “because they took crude of $100 and processed refined products of $97”.

“You have not added overhead. My point is if Nigerian refineries produce crude oil, unless we deal with our inefficiency, one litre of petrol will be the most expensive in the world,” the tax expert said.

If this happens, Oyedele said, subsidy at the pump would be replaced with subsidy of the refineries.