The Federal Government is making moves to end export of its crude oil as it pushes for a “refining, processing environment”,Minister of State,Petroleum Resources, Ibe Kachikwu, said Wednesday.
Addressing State House Correspondents after the Federal Executive Council meeting , Kachikwu said “We are pushing for a refining, processing environment and move away from exporting as it were to refining petroleum product.thats one change you will see. Secondly, how we sell our crude is going to be looked at, there is a lot of geographical market we need to look at long term contracting and sales as opposed to systemic contracting we have been doing . Those are the fundamentals, it’s a document if well executed will fundamentally will take the change process that we began in 2015 to its logical conclusion hopefully in the next couple of years.
His address said in the main, “Today we took in council the Nigeria petroleum policy document. about 3 weeks ago was you are aware we considered the gas policy, the essence of the gas policy is how to change the imperatives of Nigeria from an oil producing country to a gas producing country, we are lot more privileged to produce more gas.
“Today policy focused on oil, the imperative needed to change in policy in the oil sector, it dealt in certain fundamentals we are already pursuing some of the policy. We are working assiduously to exit the importation of fuel in 2019 and captured the cash calls changed we have done which enables the sector to fund itself through incremental volumes ,it captures the reorganisation in the NNPC for efficiency and enable accountability. it captured the issues in the Niger Delta and what we needed to do as a government to focus on stability and consistency in the sector.
“It is a very comprehensive 100 page document that’s deals with all the spectrum in the industry, the last time this was done was in 2007 and it’s has been 10 Years and you are aware that the dynamics of the oil industry has changed dramatically. Apart from the fact fluidity in pricing and uncertainty in terms of the price regime in crude .
“We are pushing for a refining processing environment and move away from exporting as it were to refining petroleum product.thats one change you will see. Secondly how we sell our crude is going to be looked at, there is a lot of geographical market we need to look at long term contracting and sales as opposed to systemic contracting we have been doing . Those are the fundamentals, it’s a document if well executed will fundamentally will take the change process that we began in 2015 to its logical conclusion hopefully in the next couple of years.
Minister of State, Budget,Zainab Ahmed also disclosed that there has been an approval for the National Council For Social Protection .It has the Vice President as chairman.It also include State governments and the private sector.
Zainab Ahnemd said “ in council we presented the National Social protection policy. The policy is a framework which seeks to provide social justice equity and inclusive growth using a transformative mechanism for mitigating poverty and unemployment in Nigeria. You will recall that the federal government since 2016 has started the social investment programme and each of the programmes that have been rolled out including , the school feeding programme, N- power programme were drawn from this policy which is in a draft form at this time . What we have done is to submit to the council today, a policy that is largely inspirational, aspirational but seeks to ensure that every Nigerian gets at least a minimum of what is required in terms of human development and protection”
On his party, the Minister of Labour, Chris Ngige said “ FEC received the National employment policy to guide this government.The last employment policy we have been operating in Nigeria was approved in 2002, that’s 14 years and In that 14 years a lot of things have changed,in labour and employment industry. Things like employment, for people with disabilities,decent jobs programme and doing jobs without polluting the environment and other things that are new and contemporary in the labour market. So this policy was reviewed in 2013 with technical assistance from international labour organisations and major stakeholders like employers were involved, workers,unions and this document was crystallised and this policy seeks to give decent jobs to people . Job creation is multi sectoral, it is not limited to one ministry,not limited to the public service alone and private sector is involved and this policy seeks to capture the relevant affected persons and people that will apply this so that we can fight unemployment and under employment.
