Former Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, disclosed on Monday that the late former President Muhammadu Buhari once threatened to dismiss him if his push to remove petrol subsidy during Buhari’s administration failed.

Kachikwu, who served as minister from 2016 to 2019, made the revelation while speaking at a virtual business mentorship lecture series hosted by the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board.

He recounted that his toughest challenge upon becoming Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company in 2015 was the nationwide fuel queues that crippled economic activities. Despite sleepless nights and efforts to resolve the crisis, he said much of the subsidised petrol imported into the country was smuggled across the borders, making scarcity unavoidable.

“The greatest challenge that I had when I resumed as GMD was the issue of long queues at petrol stations. Very few Nigerians realise how much of a traumatic experience it is for a minister or a GMD, who’s committed, to get up in the morning and find out the whole country is grounded. Of course, I’ll go to filling stations, try to help them fill, and try to make sure there are no unnecessary traffic obstructions. At the end of the day, every time that happened, I had no sleep.

“When I then did my investigation, it was clear that a lot of the products we were bringing were crossing the border at subsidised rates. No matter how much I tried to work with customs, work with the ministry, or work with everybody, it just never happened. It just kept going because the position didn’t have the political or security resources to police Nigeria’s borders.”

He said he repeatedly urged Buhari to approve a review of pump prices to curb the losses, but the President, holding firmly to his populist stance, consistently opposed any adjustment.

“I went to the President very many times, and I said, ‘Look, I need to move up on price. He resisted that very much because of his populist-type position. Eventually, he said, ‘Okay, you know what? I’ll leave you to take the risk. If you take the risk and it works, fine. If it doesn’t work, I fire you.’ That’s all well and good for me. And I did,” Kachikwu said.

Kachikwu said he introduced a policy he called “price modulation,” which aligned petrol prices with international market trends.

According to him, the modest adjustment eliminated the subsidy and cleared fuel queues nationwide within 48 hours.

“That singular price adjustment removed the subsidy. There was no more subsidy. And within 48 hours, magically, every queue in the country stopped. It never happened again until I left. So, that was how I could, at least, sleep better, and the government was willing to make more money,” he noted.

The former minister further noted that he declined to settle the billions of naira in outstanding subsidy arrears he met in office, insisting that most of the claims could not be verified.

Kachikwu stressed that while President Bola Tinubu’s removal of fuel subsidy was inevitable, it ought to have been implemented alongside concrete plans for refineries, infrastructure, transporters, and oil-producing communities.