Emmanuel Akosile

The Nigerian Government says it plans to stop the importation of petrol into the country by 2023.

Mele Kyari, the Group Managing Director (GMD) of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), made this known during the signing ceremony of the Condensate Refinery Strategy Programme (CRSP) Front End Engineering Design recently.

A recent NNPC’s Tweet at @NNPCgroup also says the CRSP Programme “is a strategy towards eliminating petroleum products importation in Nigeria.”

Earlier, Kyari had explained that President Muhammadu Buhari is concerned that as an oil-producing country, Nigeria is one of the highest importers of petrol in the world.

Recall that in 2017, the Federal Government had intended to stop the importation of petroleum products by 2019 following the approval of a new National Oil Policy by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).

However, the state oil corporation was unable to accomplish this goal by the end of 2019 in discontinuing importation of the products.