Isa Yuguda, a former governor of Bauchi State has said that officials of the state oil firm, marketers and other influential Nigerians were involved in petrol subsidy scam.
“Up until the time of its removal, the fuel subsidy has mostly been a scam run by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) in conjunction with marketers and other stakeholders in the oil sector.” said in an interview on Channels Television.
According to him, he was privileged to serve as the chairman of a subcommittee between 2008 and 2009 under the economic meltdown period and he chaired the committee on subsidy where everything about the scam from the initiative was discovered.
“I am sad to let Nigerians know what I saw; we came across situations where subsidy was claimed on pipelines that never existed,” Yuguda said.
The former minister said that the NNPC and oil marketers just claim that they have pumped x amount of either finished products or crude.
“Those that claim to pump the products and those that are in the subsidy scam, they just fill papers, invoices and they claim subsidy on it,” Yuguda explained.
When asked again if it was indeed the NNPC that was making these claims, Yuguda replied in the affirmative.
“Who else is doing it?” he rhetorically asked.
He further said that the removal of subsidy has long been discussed and is long overdue, however, previous governments did not have the political will to implement the removal of subsidy.
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