Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai has said that whatever the Federal Government manages ends up a failure.
This was as he described the Federal Government as a failure in managing the oil and gas business and asked it to get out of the sector and privatize it for the good of the nation.
He spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Thursday on the occasion of the seventh edition of KadInvest, an annual event organised by the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency.
He was speaking on the theme of this year’s KadInvest, which is ‘Building a Resilient Economy’.
Emphasising that whatever the government manages turns out bad, El-Rufai argued that sectors performing better in the country are sectors that have nothing to do with the government like entertainment, telecoms, fintech, and others.
He regretted that nothing has changed in the oil sector despite the commercialisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company in July 2022.
He described the NNPC as Nigeria’s biggest problem and should, insisting that it should be privatised.
While he noted that the Group Chief Executive Officer of NNPC Limited, Mele Kyari is trying his best, he, however, maintained that the company has failed and has no business being in the sector.
He gave the Nigerian Telecommunications Limited as an example of a sector government was in charge that failed but is now working because the private sector came in and revolutionalised the business.
The ruling All Progressives Congress governor said, “I am giving this example so that when I say the government should get out of oil and gas, people should not think it is crazy; it is not. There is no reason why the Nigerian Government should still be in the oil and gas sector. It should just get out, it has failed. By every measure, it has failed.
“This year, NNPC ha,s not brought N20,000 to the federation account. We are living on taxes. It is PPTs, royalties, income, tax, and VAT that are keeping the country going because NNPC claims that subsidy has taken all the oil revenues. I don’t believe it.”
For Nigeria to overcome its many challenges, according to the governor, “the government should sell everything in oil and gas sector…The government should get out of everything that is left of electricity, leave it to the private sector, create the environment, the money will come.”
“We did it in the telecoms sector,” he added.