Nigeria loses $15 billion yearly to oil theft, study finds
Annual losses of approximately $15 billion from oil theft and pipeline vandalism threaten the viability of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda past 2027, according to research presented by Professor Usman Muhammed from Kaduna State University. Speaking on Friday at the 1st Citizens Engagement Conference in Kaduna, Muhammed highlighted that Nigeria’s petroleum sector suffers from governance failures, policy instability, and infrastructure deterioration despite the country possessing 37 billion barrels of crude reserves and 209 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
Between 2019 and 2024, the nation’s daily crude output ranged from 1.4 to 1.67 million barrels, falling short of its 1.8 million barrel OPEC allocation, while inflation and joblessness exceeded 22 percent and 33 percent, respectively. The professor’s analysis showed a 0.74 correlation between production levels and GDP expansion, with regulatory quality and investment accounting for over 81 percent of economic performance variance in the sector.
Conference co-convener Nasir AbdulQuadri advocated for complete privatization of refineries, citing the 650,000-barrel-per-day Dangote facility as evidence that private management succeeds where government operations have failed for decades.
