Reports indicate that Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari is likely to keep the country’s oil ministerial position\u00a0for himself.<\/p>\n
This is because of several reported cases of\u00a0massive corruption in the sector.<\/p>\n
A political associate told the Reuters that Nigeria\u2019s oil sector is so dirty that nobody\u2019s hands are clean enough to do the \u201csurgical changes\u201d needed.<\/p>\n
Muhammadu Buhari was on last Friday\u00a0sworn into office as president of Nigeria.<\/p>\n
He on Tuesday sent\u00a0a list of 15 special advisors to the nation’s outgoing national assembly for approval.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, according to the Reuters, the cabinet would not be publicly revealed until the end of July or early August.<\/p>\n
Buhari have had extensive knowledge of the oil sector after serving as\u00a0head of the Petroleum Trust Fund under military ruler Sani Abacha in the 1990s and oil minister in the 1970s under Olusegun Obasanjo.<\/p>\n
TASK AHEAD IN THE OIL SECTOR<\/strong><\/p>\n Former Nigera President, Goodluck Jonathan left Buhari with a cash-strapped government, with a rainy-day fund so depleted that it must borrow just to cover salaries.<\/p>\n The government relies on oil sales for the bulk of its revenues but there has been little oversight on how these are handled.<\/p>\n Former central bank governor Lamido Sanusi was sacked under Jonathan after he declared that some $20 billion in oil revenues were missing between 2012 and 2013.<\/p>\n The dealings inside the state owned company NNPC are so opaque that PriceWaterhouseCoopers, commissioned to do a forensic audit over the missing funds, said it was unable to obtain enough account documentation.<\/p>\n Not only is oil money stolen through accounting gymnastics and oversight gaps, but oil itself goes missing at unmetered oilfield well heads, pipeline taps and export terminals.<\/p>\n Pipeline protection and coastal inspection contracts have been given to ex-militants of the oil-producing delta who kidnapped foreign oil workers and blew up key infrastructure until a 2009 amnesty.<\/p>\n Buhari plans to let the 60 billion naira-a-year amnesty program end in December as scheduled to save money and it is unclear what he will fund in its place.<\/p>\n The new leader has also made clear that he wants to revamp Nigeria\u2019s refining sector, which declined while the country became dependent on imports for fuel.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s emotionally attached to the refineries because he built some of them. He wants them to start functioning again,\u201d the APC source said.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: citifmonline.com\/Ghana (With files from Reuters)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reports indicate that Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari is likely to keep the country’s oil ministerial position\u00a0for himself. This is because of several reported cases of\u00a0massive corruption in the sector. A political associate told the Reuters that Nigeria\u2019s oil sector is so dirty that nobody\u2019s hands are clean enough to do the \u201csurgical changes\u201d needed. Muhammadu […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":103967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[38,14],"class_list":["post-121647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/103967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}