Tinubu urged to relinquish petroleum minister portfolio

President Bola Tinubu has restricted ministers, ministers of state, and heads of agencies of the Federal Government to a maximum of three vehicles in their official convoys — President Bola Tinubu

A founding member of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr Osita Okechukwu, has called on President Bola Tinubu to relinquish his position as Minister of Petroleum Resources.

Ikechukwu, in a statement on Saturday, argued that the call is in tandem with the quest to reposition the petroleum sector of the economy.

Stressing the need to weed out what he termed “the buccaneer antics of the less than transparent Oil Mafia,” he argued that the measure will help bring sanity in the Petroleum sector not only in positioning the President effectively as General Overseer of the entire Federal Ministries; but also an enablement for the Hadiza Bala Usman Coordinating Policy Unit to effectively sanitise the oil industry.

Okechukwu, a former director general of the Voice of Nigeria (VON), cautioned the President not to fall into the toxic state capture trap of the Minister of Petroleum, which made the operation of the oil industry opaque and made it impossible for former Presidents to even fix one out of four petroleum refineries in over two decades.

“It would be strategic if President Tinubu, GCFR, willingly vacates the office of Minister. I am making this humble appeal on the grounds that it is practically unimaginable and absolutely impossible for the Hadiza Bala Usman-led Coordinating Policy Unit to monitor or even take a cursory glance at the Petroleum Ministry as it would amount to supervising her principal, the President, who is the Minister,” he noted.

“The failure to make any of the country’s four refineries functional made Nigerians lose faith in democracy, just as it has generated hunger and multidimensional poverty.

“Nigeria has also, over the years, suffered great economic haemorrhage by squandering over $70 billion on importation of refined petroleum products as well as undue imbalance on the country’s foreign exchange earnings.”

He commended President Tinubu for compelling all the ministers to be on their toes by exercising the executive powers conferred on him by Section 5(1) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic.