by Isi Esene

President Goodluck Jonathan has set a target of 10-years for the government to put an end to the importation of fuel into the country. He said failure to achieve this would mean those in government are failures.

He said this in Abuja while receiving reports from three separate committees commissioned to investigate the problem and find workable solutions to the lingering fuel crisis in the country.

The committees include the committee established to design a new corporate governance code for ensuring full transparency, good governance and global best practices in the NNPC and other oil industry parastatals which had Dotun Sulaiman as its Chairman; the committee headed by Kalu Idika Kalu which was charged with the duty of conducting a high-level assessment of the nation’s refineries and recommending ways of improving their efficiency and commercial viability, and the Petroleum Revenue Special Task Force headed by Nuhu Ribadu.

The president said the reports are not meant to witch hunt anyone but to look at the oil industry and tell government the best approach to maximize the nation’s revenue base.

He reportedly said, “I thank the Minister of Petroleum Resources for setting up the committees when I directed her to do so,” and commended the efforts of chairmen of the task forces and members for working day and night to produce the report, adding that “government will surely make use of these reports on the governance and control because it has to do with the reforms and we feel the oil industry needs to be reformed. Oil industry is an international industry and Nigeria’s case cannot be different and we as players must also do what others are doing. We cannot continue to lag behind. Oil is our mainstay and we have to do more, especially when we consider the fact that almost all the African coastal states are discovering oil and if we don’t really review our approach to oil industry and come up with a robust plan in terms of our relationship with investors and others, it is either they will abandon us and go to other country or they will be exploiting us at our own detriment and go and invest in other places and so we feel we need to look at the area of government and control.