Subsidy removal: 'Nigeria's true oil production, a mystery

A former university lecturer, ProfessorAssisi Asobie, has said that Nigeria's true oil production has remained a mystery, more than 50 years after the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the country.This disclosure is coming against the increasing controversies generated by the planned fuel subsidy removal by the Federal Government.Asobie, who is the chairman, Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI), made the submission while speaking at a sensitisation workshop organised by NEITI for media practitioners and professional associations in Akwanga, Nasarawa State on Tuesday.He also said Nigeria's underdevelopment and the pervading abject poverty among its people were rooted in the lack of transparency and accountability in the management of the revenues derived from its natural resources.Presenting a paper entitled: 'Implementing EITI in Nigeria: Challenges, Constraints and Opportunities,' Asobie said the huge revenue losses the country had incurred in the last 50 years were absurd and pathetic.He also disclosed that NEITI, through its audit exercise conducted between 1999 and 2004, discovered that there had been gross under-assessment and underpayment of royalty and taxes by most of the major players in the oil industry, running into billions of US dollars.
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