Lagos State Governor, Mr Akinwunmi Ambode, on Monday said the state had officially joined Nigeria's league of oil producing states with the discovery of crude oil by Tunde Folawiyo Petroleum Company Limited in Badagry.
Ambode made the declaration when the management of the company led by Mr Tunde Folawiyo, its Group Managing Director, paid him a courtesy visit at the Lagos House, Ikeja.
He commended the firm for its doggedness and achievement of the feat after 25 years of hard work.
"I want to thank you very much for this and I know that based on section 162 Sub-Section 2 of the Nigeria Constitution, Lagos has become an oil producing state.
"By the virtue of this achievement, the 13 per cent derivation that is due to oil producing states, Lagos will start to partake from it by your very good gesture. So, we officially declare Lagos State an oil producing state.
"We also notify the Federal Government by this action that we would be sharing out of the 13 per cent derivation.
"All we need do is to apply and then we join," Ambode said.
The governor said that the feat had placed Lagos in the history books as the first state outside the Niger Delta to become an oil producing state.
He said it had also opened up a new page for revenue generation in the state.
"It also means that by the additional revenue that is coming from this action, we would have more resources to provide infrastructure for Lagos residents.
"We are urging other investors and businessmen to emulate this gesture, so that beyond the issue of profit, you are actually impacting positively on people, " he said.
Ambode said that Tunde Folawiyo Petroleum Company, being an indigenous firm, had shown the possibilities and opportunities for investors and businessmen willing to commit their resources to local production.
"The Federal Government has always said that we all need to look inwards and start to do things for ourselves.
"Spending 25 years to be able to get to this stage and getting something productive as well as indigenous shows that anything is possible in Nigeria.
"This discovery is coming at a time when we are experiencing dwindling revenue from different areas of our economy and when the foreign exchange is highly turbulent.
"It gives one great hope that the future prosperity of Nigeria is assured and is secured by transactions like this," he said.
Earlier, Folawiyo said that the discovery of crude oil in Lagos took over 25 years to achieve and had shown that there were possibilities when government lent support to indigenous investors and companies.
"We could have given up because it was a very rough road, but the point is that only a Nigerian company would have continued to do what we did.
"The main crux is that we need government and government needs us, and where government supports assiduously, it can only be success," he said.
Folawiyo said the company had committed about 400 million dollars to achieve the feat.
He said the current status of the oil well had the capacity to produce at least 12,000 barrels per day, with a possibility of increasing to 25,000 or 50,000 barrels per day in the nearest future.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Folawiyo presented Gov. Ambode with a sample of the crude oil discovered by his company.
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