The Nigerian economy lost approximately $11 billion between 2009 and 2011 in oil revenue through illegal oil bunkering and pilfering. This staggering figure was disclosed by the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) yesterday in Abuja in an audit of the oil and gas sector.
This colossal amount is said to account for losses in the upstream sector alone with a further $900 million lost in the downstream sector through pipeline vandalism. Yet according to NEITI, the combined total losses accounts for 7.7% of the total revenue accrual to Nigeria from crude oil.
This amount will more than pay for the cleaning of the massive oil spillage from these illegal activities and the attendant damage being caused to the ecosystem. If these amount is reinvested into the Nigeria's infrastructure, in 10 years, Nigeria will rival developed economies around the world in terms of infrastructure.
To put these figures into perspective, the combined total losses is more than the gross domestic product (GDP) of these African countries in 2011.
Mali, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Chad, Zimbabwe, Benin, Rwanda, Niger, Malawi, Guinea, Mauritania, Swaziland, Togo, Eritrea, Lesotho, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Cape Verde, Djibouti, Liberia, Seychelles, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Comoros and Sao Tome and Principe.
Point 1.
How can Africa's most populous nation stem these massive losses in the country's national revenue?
Point 2.
How can a country be this rich yet its citizens are among the poorest in Africa?
Point 3.
Isn't it time the Nigerian government take the matter of illegal oil theft serious and pay more attention to the attendant ecological damage this is causing the local environment.
Point 4.
Why are Western nations keeping a tight lip on the scourge of stolen oil and the ecological disaster that results from it as opposed to the piracy in the gulf of Aden?
Panellist let us here from you.
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