How True is Pastor Adeboye's Claim that Nigeria loses 80% of Oil Production to Theft?
- A new report has verified the veracity of two sensitive claims made by Pastor Adeboye regarding the Nigerian economy
- The general overseer of the RCCG had claimed FG confirmed that 80% of Nigeria’s oil production is lost to theft and over 90% of the country's revenue is used to repay debt
- While the claim on theft of Nigeria’s oil production is found to be incorrect, the claim that 90% of the federal government’s revenue is used to repay debt is true
PAY ATTENTION: Click “See First” under the “Following” tab to see Legit.ng News on your Facebook News Feed!
Pastor Enoch Adeboye, the general overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), recently claimed that the Nigerian government confirmed that 80% of the country’s oil production is lost to theft.
The revered cleric said this on Sunday, April 3, adding that 90% of oil revenue is used to service debt in Nigeria.
Source: Getty Images
His words:
“More than 80 percent of all the oil we are producing is been stolen and nobody has denied it, it came from the government.
PAY ATTENTION: Subscribe to Digital Talk newsletter to receive must-know business stories and succeed BIG!
“Who is the one stealing the oil? Where is the money going to? 80 percent of what should have been the income of a nation is going into the hands of some people. What do they want to do with the money? Who are the foreign nations buying this stolen oil? How many of these nations of the world are your friends?"
How true is Pastor Adeboye's claim?
According to the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC), Nigeria loses more than 115,000 barrels per day (bpd) to oil theft and vandalism between January 2021 and February 2022, which amounts to $3.27 billion worth of crude oil, TheCable reported.
The newspaper noted that, by implication, the country lost about 7.6% of the current 1.5 million barrels of crude produced per day on average.
It added that if 80% of Nigeria’s crude oil is stolen as claimed by the cleric, that means the country produces about 300,000 bpd, whereas regulators put the daily output at 1.5 million.
Legit.ng gathers that the NUPRC recently expressed worry over the “crude loss figures recently being quoted in the media by some operators, given actions taken so far on the issue.”
The commission had said it established a panel to audit the activities of operators in the upstream sector to ascertain the actual volume of oil lost to theft.
“To ascertain the veracity of these claims, the Commission has activated all the necessary mechanisms to get to the root of the matter and establish the actual volume of crude stolen as against the volumes claimed,” it said.
Oil theft: Pastor Adeboye's claim not true
Relying on the record of the NUPRC, TheCable concluded that Pastor Adeboye's claim that the government has backed the assertion that 80% of Nigeria’s oil production is lost to oil theft is false.
The newspaper stated:
"Based on the regulator’s record, only 7.6 percent of crude oil is lost to theft."
More than 90% of Nigeria's revenue used to repay debt?
Another claim made by Pastor Adeboye is that more than 90% of Nigeria’s oil revenue is being used to service the country’s debt.
In 2020, the federal government made a total revenue of N3.42 trillion. It used N3.34 trillion from the revenue for debt servicing.
This implies that for every N100 earned as revenue, N97 was spent on debt servicing during the period under review.
In 2021, the federal government spent N4.2 trillion on debt servicing between January and November 2021, according to Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget and national planning.
The figure amounts to 76.2% of the N5.51 trillion generated for the period.
Also, records from the budget office show that the total revenue inflow of the federal government stood at N3.49 trillion in the first three quarters of 2021, while N3.42 trillion was used to service debts. This means that debt service to revenue represented 97.9% for the period under review.
Relying on the referenced figures, TheCable concluded that Pastor Adeboye's claim that over 90% of the federal government’s revenue is used to repay debt is true.
Report shows how Nigeria lost 116.46m litres of fuel worth N18.88bn in 2021
Meanwhile, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said about 116.46 million litres of fuel worth N18.88 billion was stolen in 2021.
Various figures from NNPC reports on Pipeline Performance for PMS reveal that from January 2021 till December last year, enormous amount of petrol brought into Nigeria by the corporation did not get to their desired depots.
The product got lost via four pipeline segments which includes Atlas Cove-Mosimi and Atlas Cove-Idimu-Satellite, Mosimi-Ibadan, Ibadana-Ilorin and Port-Harcourt-Aba.
Source: Legit.ng
