Why Nigerians May Not Appreciate My Achievements As Petroleum Minister- Timipre Sylva

Nigeria’s former Minister of State Petroleum, Timipre Sylva has said that his achievements may not be appreciated by Nigerians due to the delay in delivering the Port Harcourt Refinery and Petrochemicals and the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) project.

But the ex-minister is optimistic that the refineries and the CNG programme of the former administration will still succeed.

The former minister said this while defending his role as junior petroleum minister on Wednesday during a on Arise TV, monitored by THE WHISTLER.

The former minister believes that the projects his ministry in collaboration with the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd initiated are enough to secure the trust of Nigerians as he is contesting for the governorship of Bayelsa State.

He had served as Bayelsa governor from 2007-2008 before he was sacked and reelected 2008-2012.

As minister, Sylva took over the role in the petroleum ministry in August 2019 but ex-president Muhammadu Buhari retained the position of the petroleum minister.

Under his watch, the NNPCL and the petroleum ministry began the turn around maintenance of Nigeria’s moribund refineries and a CNG conversion programme.

The programmes were not completed before he resigned in March 2023 to contest for the Bayelsa State gubernatorial election

Sylva said, “On the ssue of my tenure as the minister, the truth is that I was the Minister of State, a lot of the things that were brought to my table were also done by a lot of technocrats who support the office of the minister of state. If for example, NNPCL gives me a road map and tells me that this is what they have perfected and this is how it is going to happen, of course, I am bound to announce it.

“I was working with NNPCL and that is what they told me about the rehabilitation of the refineries and how it will go. I conceptualized and insisted that it should be fixed because I felt that even if we are going to sell off the refineries, they could not be sold as dead refineries.

“If you look at the programme I came up with, they are very laudable. If they have not succeeded now, you can be sure that they will succeed. The CNG Programme everybody agrees that is a programme that will truly succeed and will be good for this country.”

The former administration achieved the passage of the Petroleum Industry Act which had lingered for over 20 years.

The PIA was signed in 2021 which opened up investments opportunities for investors in the country’s petroleum industry.

He added, “Were those programmes good for the country? Were they bad for the country that should be the judgement. Is fixing the refineries a bad decision? The CNG policy, was it a bad policy? It wasn’t a bad policy. It is just that there are time overruns.

“In project management, there are sometimes you experience time overruns. There are some programmes that also succeeded while I was there. Of course, for me to have passed the PIA is a major plus because that had taken so long before my time and we pursued it and were able to pass the PIA.”

Meanwhile, the new minister of petroleum, oil, Heineken Lokpobiri and the leadership of the NNPCL, Mele kyari, have promised that the Port Harcourt refinery will be delivered by December this year.