President Muhammadu Buhari has stressed the need for African petroleum producing countries to take their people out of economic poverty. President Buhari, who was represented by the minister of state for petroleum, disclosed this at the opening of the Extraordinary Session of the Council of Ministers of the African Petroleum Producers Organization.
TVC News’ Celestina Iria reports that Nigeria and a few other African oil producing countries took the lead in the formation of APPO in the 1980’s.
The aim was to provide a platform for cooperation, collaboration and knowledge sharing among African oil producing countries. But nearly 30 years after, the APPO has not been able find its feet, which is why Nigeria is calling for it’s reform.
Nigeria is a founding member of the organization and has the longest experience in the oil industry. It has been saddled with the implementation of the reform and has temporarily moved the APPO headquarters from Brazzaville Congo to Abuja Nigeria.
Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari, is represented at this event by the Minister of State for petroleum Resources. He said the country has completed it’s assignment and is ready to submit its final report to the council of Ministers.
14 member countries took part in this session namely, Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Congo, Chad, Côte d lvoire, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea,
Ghana, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and South Africa.
At the end of the session, decisions reached by the council of Ministers included, Maintaining APPO headquarters in Abuja, liquidating the debts
owned National Social Security Fund of Congo in the sum of 34,486,929 FCFA from the Reserve fund to avoid additional fines and appointing Omar Ibrahim as Secretary General of APPO.
The African Petroleum Producers Organization is expected to create a continental oil organization that will mitigate total dependency on foreign
technology and markets for oil.
