SAN FRANCISCO, May 24, (THEWILL) – One time Minister of Finance, Dr. Shamsuddeen Usman on Monday disclosed that the current challenges bedeviling Nigeria’s petroleum sector would have been a thing of the past had the late Sani Abacha not aborted the privatisation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, after taking over power as Head of State in 1993.
Speaking in Abuja at the inauguration of a study group on giving voice and voting power to retail shareholders in the country, Shamsudeen said: “The biggest problem of this country is lack of continuity. What happened was that Abacha came and put a cutlass and just cut it off. The reforms of NEPA, the reforms of NNPC all these NITEL, Nigeria Airways, SwissAir had actually paid for it. By today, we would have had a national carrier. All these reforms that you are seeing would have been concluded long ago.
“For NNPC, if you see the fight that we fought even with the Minister of Petroleum who was one of the most powerful ministers that were closest to Babangida. We insisted that the Minister of Petroleum should not be the chairman of NNPC and that was approved by the National Executive Council.
“So we removed him as the chairman of the NNPC because NNPC was to be restructured as a full commercial entity. But I was surprised that when I came back to government, the Minister of Petroleum had gone back to become the chairman of NNPC,” the former minister stated.
About the Author
