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‘Gas Expansion Project Will Lift 100 Million Nigerians Out Of Poverty’ – FG

Published

4 years ago

April 13, 2021

The Federal Government of Nigeria has once reiterated its commitment to lift not less that fone hundred million Nigerians out of poverty..

According to the Federal Government, this will be accomplished through the implementation of National Gas Expansion Programme.

This was made known by the Federal Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Timipre Sylva in a recent submission in Owerri, the Imo State capital.

He was speaking at the opening ceremony of the NGEP consultative forum and he stated that the Federal Government was committed to giving jobs to millions of young Nigerians.

In his submission, he said;

“Counting the impacts of the programme on our socioeconomic space within the first year of its launching, the administration further stepped up its commitment to industrialising Nigeria through gas utilisation by declaring year 2021 to 2030 ‘Decade of Gas’.

With proven gas reserves of over 200 million cubic feet and natural gas presents an opportunity for the nation to use gas as the catalyst for its socio economic renaissance.”

In an earlier submission, he stated that t he President, Muhammadu Buhari wants to leave functional refineries as the legacy of his eight-year regime.

Mr. Sylva made this known when he appeared on Channels Television’s popular program, ‘Sunday Politics’.

In his submission, he said;

“We are focusing now on the rehabilitation now that the FEC has approved the rehabilitation. The discussion on the management of the refinery will commence and that will be another discussion for how long the contract for operations and maintenance will last and then the next step – are you going to privatize, are you going to commercialize, are you going to concession. There are a lot of options open to the government but we can’t discuss that now.

We are not lying to Nigerians. We have told them that this is going to be in three phases and the first phase which is definitely going to be within the tenure of this administration and you should hold us to it is 18 months and we are going to take the refinery to 90 percent of the nameplate of its capacity and that is what you should hold us to.

What President Buhari wants to leave as a legacy are refineries that are functional. That is really what we are looking at because what is going to happen to those refineries later will be decided by Nigerians and by future administrations.”