Outrage over exposure of Buhari’s many deals with Niger Republic

There has been outrage over the exposure of the many deals of President Muhammadu Buhari, pulling huge resources from Nigeria to develop the Niger Republic. Raging stakeholders in the country have berated the President for undermining Nigeria’s development, including the hardship in the country to provide succour for Niger Republic and her citizens.

The President’s development interventions in Niger Republic vis-à-vis the hardship and economic woes in Nigeria has begun to generate suspicion and distrust of his leadership and mission in Niger Republic.

A stakeholder had protested the abandoning of production facilities of higher capacities in Nigeria for financing the same with lower capacities in Niger Republic and turning Nigeria to rely on products from Niger.

The stakeholder protested: “You have four refineries with a REFINING CAPACITY of 450,000 barrels per day. You abandoned them to rot.

“Niger Republic is a small country with a REFINING CAPACITY of 20,000 barrels per day. You abandoned all your 0wn and went to embrace the Niger Republic.

“You signed an MoU of $2 billion to transport your own crude from your country via pipelines, to refine in Niger Republic, so you can buy the refined products.

“You have the resources to run pipelines from Niger Delta to supply crude oil to Niger Republic, but you lack the resources to maintain the existing refineries. Yet, you said you are a government of the federal republic of Nigeria. You haven’t disclosed your mission…!”

President Buhari had presided over the groundbreaking inauguration of the construction of a rail line connecting the major commercial and administrative centre of Kano, through Kazaure, Daura, Katsina to the border town of Jibiya and the Niger Republic city of Maradi.

The President explained that Jibiya and Maradi constitute a significant trading core between Nigeria and Niger Republic. He stated that the rail line will establish an end-to-end logistic supply chain in railway transport services between Northern and Southern regions of the country, reaching Nigerian southern ports of Lagos and Warri.

Moreover, President Buhari had approved construction of 946 kilometres of pipeline from Agadem, Niger Republic to the Kaduna Refinery at the cost of about US$1 billion. He ordered the NNPC to import crude from Niger Republic, citing Niger Delta restiveness; but ignored the raging terrorism in the north orchestrated by bandits, ISWAP, and Boko Haram.

The Kaduna Refinery and Petrochemical infrastructure has a distance of about 677 km from Warri, its source of crude supply. Nigeria is linking a pipeline from Agadem in Niger Republic to Chad at a distance of 193 kilometres, as well as 400 kilometres through Chad to link to a pipeline for crude export on a 1080 km pipeline from Doba fields, Chad, to the export point in Kribi, Cameroon.

There is also skepticism over purportedly political alignment between the Nigerian president and political leaders in Niger Republic. There was outrage when two governors who include Governor Issa Moussa of Zinder Region and Governor Zakiri Umar of Maradi, from Niger Republic were in Kano to participate in the reelection campaign of President Buhari in 2019.

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Meanwhile, there is outrage over procurement of SUV vehicles at the cost of N1.15 billion by the president for Niger Republic. This is as the Nigerian government has consistently been complaining of shortfall in revenue generation, in addition to increasing debt burden.