Economy
By Ejenike Chukwuma
THE Managing Director and CEO of Falcon Corporation Limited, Prof Joseph Ezigbo has said that nothing thrives when the political environment is not right.
Prof. Ezigbo told Realnews in an exclusive interview in Lagos that the nation’s economy has affected the oil and gas sector and that nothing thrives in an economy with political uncertainties,
“Nothing ever thrives well in a political uncertainty, nothing thrives when the political situation is not right no matter the sector because whether you like it or not, policies govern everything. Once there is uncertainty, business doesn’t thrive well. So that is what’s simply happening,” he said
Speaking on how the oil and gas sector has fared amidst the perennial fuel problem, Prof. Ezigbo said that the issue of fuel scarcity has nothing to do with the sector.
“The issue of fuel scarcity has nothing to do with the sector. It has to do with again, political will. I’ll tell you what’s happening here, we do know that most of the fuel imported into Nigeria is not used by Nigerians because in our neighboring countries, the cost of fuel in those countries is about twice or three times the cost of fuel in Nigeria, so fuel is brought into Nigeria and Nigerians being “creative” take them and go to the neighboring countries, sell them and make money, and there’s no fuel here, there’s scarcity and then there’s escalation,” he said
Speaking on removal of subsidy on petrol, Prof Ezigbo said: “Please, let’s not be confused about issues, refinery and subsidy are two different things, anybody bringing them together, for me it’s deception. We are talking about the subsidy, the fuel and the populace. The unions understand the issues but decide to be silent.
According to him, petrol is sold by a few people to outsiders elsewhere and they’re the ones making the money not the masses.
He explained that if there is subsidy and petrol is not smuggled out of the country, the volume of petrol that comes into the country will be enough for all the cars in Nigeria and there will be no queues.
“Why I said the issue of the refinery is different; our refineries are not working because, call it a cabal, a group of people have refused to allow it to work. Everybody knows that there are refineries outside this Nigeria owned by some Nigerians, why would they own refineries outside Nigeria that are working and refineries in Nigeria would not work. Why is it that we have refineries that have been shut down and not working and yet every month, they tell us about billions of Naira that have been spent on those refineries?.
“Some of them are very obsolete, but if you’re told the amount of money spent on those refineries in budgets every year, you’d shudder, money that could build you several modular refineries, the problem is that a group of them have decided the refineries would not work because people are making a lot of money in importing fuel, people are making so much money in refining fuel that belongs to Nigeria that Nigerians take to refine outside and bring back to sell in Nigeria.
“It’s not news, it is out there for people to see, the problem is, do we have somebody who has the strength of character to say no. We are so docile that we’re like trained dogs you can lead by the nose, that’s what Nigerians are. If not, we wouldn’t be where we are. So until we have leaders who can lead by example, we follow our leaders, we behave like our leaders, because we behave like our leaders, we simply follow their examples, so if we have somebody that can give us a good example, Nigeria would be on the road to crossing into the promised land,” he added.
E.C
Tags: Falcon Corporation PROF. EZIGBO
