By Adaobi Rhema Oguejiofor
The Federal Government has said that the amount of money spent on subsidizing petrol between 2005 and 2021 was about N13 trillion, and that the country also lost about N16.3 trillion to oil theft from 2009 to 2020, amounting to N29.3 trillion.
This was disclosed on Thursday in Abuja through the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) at a policy dialogue on oil swap, which was co-hosted by NEITI and Policy Alert, an indigenous civil society organisation, with support from the Opening Extractives.
The Executive Secretary of NEITI, Orji Ogbonnaya-Orji, in a presentation, said that there was an urgent need to take decisions on the agitation for the removal of fuel subsidies.
He maintained that the full deregulation of the petroleum sector would permanently put a stop to the conversation about oil swaps, as the latest discoveries by NEITI has revealed the huge amounts of money spent by the government on subsidy.