The president of Nigeria Society of Engineers ( NSE), Engr Ademola Isaac Olorunfemi has called on the federal government to abolish fuel subsidy in view of about N950bn spent on payment of oil marketers in eleven months to avert fuel crisis in the country.

This is even as he advised that the subsidy funds should be invested on the construction of new refineries regretting that the existing refineries cannot handle 50 percent of their 440, 000 bpd capacity.

He stated this in Abuja yesterday while addressing newsmen on the forthcoming National Engineering Conference and Annual General Meeting billed to take place next week at Akure with the theme, “National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP ) 2014 : Strategies for Implementation”.

Giving a breakdown of the payment, he said, “President Muhammadu Buhari recently approved the payment of N413bn subsidy arrears to oil marketers, President Goodluck Jonathan paid N381bn subsidy in December 2014 and another N156bn in May before leaving office and the entire payments happened within the last 11 months”.

He lamented that successive governments have continue to award turn around maintenance contracts that only turnaround contractors bank accounts stressing that Nigeria have been experiencing sickening fuel shortages since the days of late Gen Sani Abacha when Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) resulted to a household phrase in Nigeria.

Olorunfemi argued that countries like Chad built a 20, 000bpd refinery within two years for N11.

8bn adding that India also built the largest refinery in the world in three years known as Jamnagar at the cost of $6 bn with a capacity of 1.24 million barrels per day.

Noting that despite billions of dollars spent on TAM that Nigeria was still importing fuel, he insisted that the federal government spent N2 trillion on fuel subsidy in 2011.