The senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) also said the federal government has
re-introduced “oil (subsidy) premium” in the 2019 budget proposal.
Speaking on Channels TV on Monday, Keyamo said the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) by the NNPC Act has the powers to spend
monies unappropriated.
Making comments on the state of the economy, Keyamo said: “I need to
remind Nigerians about the GDP growth. Of the 11 countries that went into
recession around the world, Nigeria has exceeded all of them in terms of
GDP growth”.
“None of them has crossed 1.4 to 1.5 percent, Nigeria is doing close to
two percent GDP growth right now. Let us get that one clear,” he said.
“Forbes Africa has rated Nigeria as the best-performing economy in Africa.
The results came out two-three weeks ago, we are the best-performing
economy in Africa.”
‘SUBSIDY’ HAS BEEN RE-INTRODUCED IN THE 2019 BUDGET
The 48-year-old lawyer said the Muhammadu Buhari-led government said is
not paying subsidy like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) did but
acknowledged that the Buhari admin is only paying “premium”.
“What happened under the PDP government was that they were paying for
products that did not land at all. That was the scam that was happening,
It was fraud, the greatest stealing in the history of this country
happened under them.
“All the PDP bigwigs were all involved in this subsidy scam, then you saw
that many of them refunded money. Like I said, they were paying for
products that did not land at all, they will tell you they have brought
product and you have to pay subsidy on those products.
“The NNPC officials knew, everybody knew that the products did not come at
all. What did Buhari do when he came? He said he wanted to cleanse that
industry, he said NNPC should take complete charge of importation.
“The government wanted to eliminate subsidy at that time, but as the price
of crude went up, the price of production went up, the price of the
bye-products also went up, its normal.”
He said at the point when oil was $28 to $30, government was not paying
subsidy, but “the difference occured when oil prices went beyond $43 per
barrel, because that was the benchmark, as it rose beyond $43, the delta
started, not subsidy. We started to pull away from N145”.
“So the landing cost came to N203/N205, and we are still selling for N145
and the president said you cannot suffer the masses. Now how do they cover
it? Not subsidy.
“The NNPC Act allows the NNPC to make refunds to the federation account,
in other words, they can spend money and return the balance to the
federation account, by law.”
When asked why the government was not appropriating this “premium”, Keyamo
said, “It is now in the 2019 budget; despite the fact that it is backed by
law, that premium has been put in the 2019 budget proposal”.