Coalition wants NGC scrapped, accuses company of fuelling high cost of cooking gas

Niger Delta Peace Coalition (NDPC), has blamed the activities of the Nigerian Gas Company (NGC), for the astronomic rise in the price of gas, which has made many Nigerian families unable to afford it.

In a statement, yesterday, the national coordinator of the NDPC, Zik Gbemre, said the NGC constitutes a bottleneck that must be quickly scrapped to salvage the gas industry in the country.

He said there is an abundance of gas deposit in Nigeria capable of generating over 100,000 megawatts of electricity, but that the bureaucratic bottlenecks created by the NGC has led to the present embarrassing situation of generating barely 4,000 megawatts for 200 million population of the country, and 12.5 kilograms of cooking gas selling for over N10,000.

He said: “It is the needless activities of the Nigerian Gas Company that has created this scarcity and made the price of gas hit record levels at present.

“The Nigerian Gas Company is nothing but a “tollgate” generating unnecessary gridlock. It must now be scrapped to ensure easy production and distribution of gas for power generation, domestic industries and cooking gas.

“Nigeria is known unfortunately for its embarrassing propensity to duplicate efforts, create unnecessary agencies, which functions are either unclear or unnecessary, and manufacture roles and duties that end up constituting clogs in the wheels of the society.”

He lamented that there are thousands of Nigerians in agencies feeding fat on the nation’s dwindling resources, who have neither defined roles nor any reason whatsoever to be in the offices they occupy.

“Paradoxically, their activities even hinder, rather than enhance the smooth running of the society,” he said.

Gbemre described the NGC as a needless Federal Government company, whose functions are detrimental to the smooth running of the Petroleum sector, adding that It was established in 1988 as one of the eleven subsidiaries of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC).

He argued that Non-Associated Gas (NAG) and Associated Gas (AG) are produced 100 per cent by the International Oil Companies (IOCs) and Nigerian indigenous oil companies, including the NPDC and ND Western Ltd, and that the NGC has no business in oil and gas production in Nigeria and wondered why IOCs and AG do not have the mandate to sell the gas they produce without passing through the Nigerian Gas Company, which, he said, is nothing but a “tollgate” that constitutes a bottleneck and barrier to gas production and development in the country?