The Ijaw Youth Council (IYC) has blamed the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources Oil, Senator Heineken Lokpobiri, for the current crisis ravaging the nation’s oil industry and causing untold hardship for the residents.
It was alleged that Lokpobiri’s lack of capacity and inefficiency were evident in how agencies under his ministry had continued to mismanage the oil sector and inflict pain on the people.
The council insisted that the minister’s lack of knowledge of the workings of the oil sector was eroding the gains of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
IYC, in a statement issued in Port Harcourt yesterday, was reacting to the latest resumption date of the Port Harcourt Refinery as announced by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL).
Recall that the NNPCL chief financial officer, Umar Ajiya, had, at a media briefing in Abuja, said the refinery would commence operations in September 2024.
But, in a statement signed by its secretary-general, Maobuye Nangi Obu and four others, they said the new date, which they noted might not also be feasible, had confirmed their position that under Lokpobiri, nothing good could come out of the oil sector.
IYC alleged that Lokpobiri’s reputation for inaction clearly raised doubts about his ability to push and implement the needed reforms to make Nigerians enjoy the availability and cost-effective prices of petroleum products.
The statement said Nigerians were suffering, especially those in rural areas like far-flung communities in the Niger Delta, because of the cost of petrol and keeping Lokpobiri as minister would worsen the ongoing hardship.
It, therefore, called on President Tinubu to reshuffle his cabinet and send Lokpobiri to a ministry where “he can hide his incompetence, or else he will continue to derail the Renewed Hope Agenda for the petroleum sector.”
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