Nigeria

An Oil and Gas Expert, Prof. Olanrewaju Aladeitan, lauds new oil and gas discoveries in Nigeria, which indicate that the country has huge gas reserves.

There are evidences. It is just like what happened with shale gas; you know that there are some unconventional sources of gas and oil that is what the shale gas is all about. An Oil and Gas Expert, Prof. Speaking on the perception of some people whether oil was truly found in the new locations, he said initially all the troughs had shown evidence of crude oil and gas in the past. The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd. “Luckily, there are new frontiers coming up, we have the Bauchi-Gombe new oil and gas discovery that is fast coming on and recently in Nasarawa and also Niger.

Prof. Olanrewaju Aladeitan urges other gas producing countries to take advantage of the vacuum created by non-supply of oil to Europe by Russia and expand ...

He said the major off-taker of Nigerian gas was in Europe, but how to reach there, and derive the utmost benefit, had also been of concern to the country. This he said was in a bid to cut down on gas flare, and also to take advantage of the economic potential of the gas reserves in the country. Olanrewaju Aladeitan has urged other gas producing countries to take advantage of the vacuum created by the non-supply of oil to Europe by Russia and expand their gas projects to penetrate the European market.

When and if he is eventually sworn in as the next president of Nigeria, Mr. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) ...

The Presidential election has come and gone and what is required now is governance; indeed good governance. Tax revenue would need to be boosted through the inclusion of the informal sector into the tax net, as much as is possible. Next, the need to address the poverty problem in Nigeria is very important. That should be addressed if the new government plans to enhance economic inclusion across the geopolitical zones. Virtually everyone is getting poorer in Nigeria since the inception of the Buhari administration in 2015. Finally, the new government should pursue a balanced development strategy, in making effort to open up the country and enhance decentralisation of economic activities away from the already congested parts of the country. The exchange rate has depreciated from about N197 to a US dollar in 2015 to N750 presently. What has become very obvious has been the increase in the level of the country’s public debt burden from about N12.5 trillion in 2015 to over N48 trillion given the latest figures of the country’s Debt Management Office (DMO). This much is clear particularly in relation to the revamping of the Nigerian economy. It is now common knowledge that under the Muhammadu Buhari administration, the state of the economy became worse than what it was in 2015 when he assumed office. When and if he is eventually sworn in as the next president of Nigeria, Mr. First, the new President must put together a crack economic team akin to those of the Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan administrations where well-tested technocrats such as Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Akinwunmi Adesina and others with sound pedigree as well as global credibility were engaged to manage the Nigerian economy.

A friend called me from the United States of America immediately after Asiwaju Bola Tinubu was declared winner of the presidential election, to ask whether ...

There is a need to redeem the country’s image among a committee of nations. The majority of Nigerians, irrespective of the results that we have, are convinced that governance under the APC is worse than under the PDP. Of course, he has just explained that he will run a government of national competence which is what the country needs. I have listened to arguments about the truth and fallacy of this personalisation of state wealth as well as those on the incongruence of equating what can be done with Lagos State wealth with what cannot be done with Nigeria’s commonwealth. If there is any image to redeem in that respect, it will be through running a government that is based on transparency and accountability. While economic issues can be whittled down at the national level because of the overriding factors such as tribalism and religion, it is not the same at the state level. But in a circumstance where poverty and illiteracy go together, one can imagine the state of the mind. A large segment of the Nigerian elites within and outside Nigeria are of the opinion that the president-elect will ‘colonise’ Nigerian wealth as they believed he did with Lagos wealth since 2007. They have unleashed poverty on the people as a weapon of submission. People were more concerned about their well-being, level of employment, and a growing economy competing favourably with other advanced economies around the world. He was surprised that people could still vote for the All Progressive Congress at the highest level of governance when it is clear they have failed economically and security wise. Clearly the APC did not win the election on the basis of good performance but ethnicity and religious factors.