Sanusi condemns Tinubu for being petroleum minister
Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has slammed President Bola Tinubu for making himself the minister of petroleum. Tinubu followed the precedence set by his predecessor in office, Muhammadu Buhari.
While announcing his ministers few months ago, the president named himself as the minister and he appointed another person as the minister of state for petroleum.
But the former Central Bank of Nigeria governor, Sanusi, believed that it’s wrong and unadvisable for the president to head the ministry as well.
He explained how he fought the past leaders of the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission (NNPC) and Mrs. Diezani Alison Madueke, petroleum minister under former president Goodluck Jonathan.
Sanusi said, “Let me advise that this idea of the President being petroleum minister is not a good idea. We have the last presidential minister of petroleum for eight years. When I was governor of the Central Bank, we had a petroleum minister. So when I talked about NNPC, I could attack Diezani.”
He argued that if the president is the head of the ministry, it will be difficult to talk about NNPC because any comment would be interpreted as an attack on the president.
“Now nobody can talk about petroleum because eight years if you talk, you are attacking the president. We need that buffer. Somebody has to be there. So a minister has to be there. Who is held accountable by Nigerians.”
He didn’t stop at that. He went on to tell Nigerians why he was removed as the governor of the apex bank.
The former emir of Kano said, “Why is NNPC not able to bring in dollars? I’m sorry, this is the question that cost me my job. I will continue asking this question until NNPC fixes it or until I die. Where are the dollars? We need to shine light on NNPC.
“The finance minister cannot tell you that today this is how many barrels of oil that we produced and exported. He can only rely on NNPC telling him. Those barrels are revenue. They belong to finance. We’ve been talking about this for 10 years. We are no longer paying subsidy. So where are the dollars… and NNPC is the most opaque oil company in the world. When I was in the central bank for 15 years, they had not been audited. So you know, the central bank is easy to attack.
“But the central bank does not manufacture dollars and you want to have stability in the exchange rate. You’ve got to go back to those issues we raised in 2014. You need to follow the money and I’m glad the CM is here. This is the number one priority.”
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