Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Timipre Silva, has defended the recent decision of the Federal Government to import refined petroleum products from Nigeria’s arid and landlocked Northern neighbour, Niger Republic.
According to the Minister, the policy is a sign that Nigeria is a big market and a positive development for regional trade, which had suffered much neglect in the past.
Speaking in an interview on Monday evening on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Timipre Sylva said Nigerians should be proud of this new development of importing fuel from Niger Republic as the country is a big market that needs excess fuel products manufactured by other countries.
The Federal Government had come under criticism recently after releasing a statement of its plan to start importation of fuel from the neighboring country Niger republic as announced by the Ministry of Petroleum last week Thursday.
According to the statement, the two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Petroleum products and storage as it says Niger republic has a refinery that produces 20,000 barrels per day.
This statement brought an uproar of criticisms as citizens blamed the Government for failure to revive the country’s refinery and keep it running as promised in the Government’s manifestoes
In his words: “I don’t see that as an embarrassment at all. As a country, Nigeria is a big market, we need products, even if all our refineries were functioning, we will still need extra products. “Niger Republic produces oil and they are landlocked as a country. They have a refinery that produces in excess of what they require as a country and they offered to sell to us in Nigeria because this is a bigger market.
“In the spirit of regional cooperation, regional trade development, we decided to buy from them. I don’t see anything wrong with that. If your neighbor is producing something that is required in your country and you buy from him, why is that a big problem?
“So, we agreed with Niger to buy the excess of what they don’t require in Niger because this is a big market.”
“Nigerians should be proud that we are doing that to encourage sub-regional trade because we have been talking about sub-regional trade for a long time and this is how it should be between neighboring countries. Niger should import from us what we have and we should be able to import from Niger what they have. Let us encourage intra-regional trade and this is one good example of trading within West Africa,” he added.
