Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr Ibe Kachikwu recounted how he was threatened by a militant.
The minister who was part of the attendees of the town hall meeting held in Kaduna spoke about how the attacks on oil installations were draining the country.
He called for calm as he assured everyone that the Federal government was on top of issues.
According to News Agency TheCableng, Dr. Kachikwu said “Last week, my phone number was published in Sahara Reporters and then I began to get millions of phone calls,” he said.
“One of the first phone calls I took not knowing who was calling me was from a militant somewhere and when I picked up the phone, he said ‘Are you the minister of petroleum’, I said yes.
“He said I dey go blow pipeline tomorrow, and I said why would you do that my brother if you love Nigerians? He said ‘are you sure you are the minister’, I said yes.
“Then he said for being so humble, I will drop the plan. That’s the kind of environment under which we operate.”
He went on to say that Nigerians shouldn’t be discouraged by the current hardships as we had a leadership that was capable of weathering the storm and turning things around.
“The reality of our situation is that wherever I turn when I was appointed, I had problems. If I turn to the refineries when I joined in October, they were not working. If I turned to the pipelines, they were non-existent,” he said.
“But I wasn’t discouraged, because if I had problems, what will I say of a man who at his age took over the mantle of this country? His Excellency, the president so that gave me a lot of encouragement.”