Business tycoon Tony Elumelu said former President Muhammadu Buhari and deceased chief of staff Abba Kyari rejected his company’s request to buy an oilfield despite raising billions of dollars to fund the deal.

Mr Elumelu’s investment company, Heir Holdings, had approached the Buhari administration to acquire an oilfield with an offer of about $2.5 billion around 2017, the business magnate told Financial Times in an interview released on Friday.

However, the former president and his right-hand man, according to Mr Elumelu, declined the offer, asserting that they could not allow an oilfield of such “strategic importance to fall into the hands of a private operator.”

Speaking with the Financial Times, Mr Elumelu said the rejection “defied logic” given that “he would have been purchasing it from a foreign company.”

Mr Elumelu, who chairs the UBA, said he soon discovered the bane of the petroleum industry, oil theft, which was a major factor influencing international oil companies’ divestment from onshore assets.

Having acquired a 45 per cent stake in an oilfield about three years ago, Mr Elumelu said he was impacted by the activities of criminal gangs who constantly robbed his pipeline and stole enough crude that caused his company to shut down.

With a 45 per cent stake acquired in an oilfield about three years ago, Mr Elumelu voiced his frustration after oil thieves robbed his pipeline and stole enough crude that caused his company to shut down production.

The frustration prompted him to tweet in 2022, “How can we be losing over 95 per cent of oil production to thieves?”

Mr Elumelu said, “The government should know, they should tell us” the masterminds behind the oil theft. “Our security agencies should tell us who is stealing our oil. You bring vessels to our territorial waters, and we don’t know?”

Mr Buhari’s spokesperson, Garba Shehu, did not immediately respond to Peoples Gazette’s request for comments on Mr Elumelu’s claim, as SMS and WhatsApp messages sent to him were unanswered.