Reorganise NNPC, Address Oil Subsidy In 3 Months, Blair Advises Buhari

…As Osinbajo says incoming govt’ll inherit $60bn debt

From IHEANACHO NWOSU, Abuja

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, yesterday, advised the President-elect, Mu­hammadu Buhari, to take tough and sweeping deci­sions on key issues militating against Nigeria within three months of inauguration as President.

Specifically, he advised Bu­hari to re-organise the Nigeria National Petroleum Corpora­tion (NNPC) and address the oil subsidy controversy that has resulted in lingering fuel scarcity .

Blair spoke at the two-day Policy Dialogue on the Im­plementation of the Agenda for Change, organised by the Policy Research and Strategy Directorate of the All Progres­sives Congress (APC). The Prime Minister, who was rep­resented by the British former Secretary of State, Peter Man­delson, said the incoming ad­ministration must take tough decision on major issues at a time it enjoyed widespread goodwill.

Meanwhile, the Vice Pres­ident-elect, Prof Femi Osin­bajo, has declared that the nation’s economy was at its worst moment in history. He put the local and international debts of the nation at $60bil­lion even as he said the coun­try was using N953.6 billion, 21 per cent of the nation’s budget, to service debts.

Decrying the current situ­ation of the country, Blair said a quick and well-tailored policy, was needed and urged the incoming Buhari adminis­tration to move swiftly after inauguration to tackle key is­sues that made Nigerians lose confidence in the government.

He said: “A country like this has extraordinary resourc­es -oil-and has this amazing privilege of source of energy, yet, power generation is not a happy issue. People have to wait for hours queueing to get fuel and end up buying it else­where. I think it needs to be addressed.”

The former Prime minister called for more investment from oil revenues in areas that would have long term impact on the welfare of the people. He named such areas as edu­cation, healthcare, agriculture, infrastructure and power gen­eration. He emphasised the need to apply revenues from oil better, saying: “They can be invested in a long term good of the country- infra­structure, human capital, edu­cation system. This is where the money should be going to.”

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