Senate President Ahmad Lawan has lamented about oil theft in Nigeria, describing perpetrators as the country’s “biggest enemies” IgbereTV reports
The lawmaker said this on Friday during the presentation of the 2023 budget proposal at the National Assembly.
“Mr President, our economy is still challenged by that of revenue. The main source of revenue for the Nigerian government is oil and gas. We always consider the diversification of our economy as crucial and it is indeed crucial,” he said during his address.
“The idea of deploying our revenues from oil and gas to support the diversification into the real sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, mining, etc. is now under serious threat. The large scale and massive stealing of our oil are concerning as this reduces drastically the revenues available to the government.
“With conflicting figures, projections have put our losses from this malaise at between 700,000 to 900,000 barrels of crude oil per day, leading to about 29-35 percent losses of oil revenue in 2022
