The former governor Bauchi, Isa Yuguda, has been under fire as group said that he is requesting government favor because he waited 15 years to make his claim regarding the removal of fuel subsidy.
According to the Guardian newspaper report, Isa Yuguda, a former governor of Bauchi State, has come under fire from a leading civil society organization, Peoples Alliance for Transparency and Accountability (PATA), for his assertions regarding the federal government’s now-halted fuel subsidy program.
In a recent interview with a national television station, Yuguda, a former minister of state for transportation in Nigeria, claimed that the fuel subsidy had been a scam that had been carried out by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) in conjunction with marketers and other oil industry stakeholders up until the time it was eliminated.
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Yuguda revealed that some people, including the NNPCL, are profiting from the subsidy scams in a speech on Monday.
“They are all involved in this, all of them, and I must also report with sadness that Nigeria subsidy, that portion of it that goes for subsidy, will continue to subsidise sub-Saharan Africa and Central Africa because the majority of these products are smuggled out of this country, then who is subsidising who?” he asked.
“Implementing policies in Nigeria can be very frustrating, especially when there is a strong interest and a cabal at play. This is similar to the bunkering issue, which can be stopped but cannot be stopped because there is not enough political will to do so.
There are numerous interests at play, and this is what has brought Nigeria to its current situation. How do you run a government that is dependent on oil? There was a time during Jonathan’s administration when we were barely pumping one million barrels per day and the prices kept falling.
The 67-year-old Yuguda should be ignored, according to a statement from PATA that was co-signed by its national coordinator, Aliyu Pai, and national secretary, Udeme Akpan, because his remarks are self-serving and amount to “attention-seeking hypocrisy.”
“It was a shame,” the group said, “that Mr. Yuguda, who claimed to have served as chairman of a subcommittee between 2008 and 2009 during the economic meltdown period and chaired the committee on subsidy, failed to alert the nation on the brazen allegation then, but waited until 15 years after.”
The group claims that “usually, the interview would have been disregarded, but because of the sensitive nature of the subject and, specifically, because President Bola Tinubu recently removed the long-overdue fuel subsidy”.
Yuguda “now wants to be seen as a hero when he is nowhere near it,” according to PATA, who also noted that it is “curious to us that he waited for over 15 years before having a brain reset to make his outlandish claim.”
The company has undergone a significant amount of change throughout, according to PATA, so the NNPC of 2008 is not the NNPC of 2023.
“The oil giant’s culture of accountability, transparency, and innovation has allowed it to transition to a profit-making corporation.
“Today, the NNPC has developed into a top-tier organization capable of competing with the brightest minds in the international energy sector.
The statement continued, “It will be pertinent for us to advise President Tinubu to be wary of characters like Yuguda whose political party is heavily to blame for the wrongdoing he is tackling today.
