The Chairman of Heirs Holdings, Tony Elumelu, has stated that ex-president Muhammadu Buhari had obstructed his efforts to acquire an oil field.

Elumelu made this known during an interview with Financial Times.

According to him, since 2017, he had been pursuing the purchase of the oil field and had secured $2.5 billion for the deal.

However, Buhari, along with his late Chief of Staff, Abba Kyari, allegedly blocked the transaction.

Elumelu was reportedly told that Nigeria could not allow a private entity to control something of such strategic significance, a stance he found illogical given that the field was being bought from a foreign company.

He said: “We would have been purchasing it from a foreign company, so why was it such an issue?”

Tony Elumelu, who also serves as the chairman of United Bank for Africa (UBA), highlighted that his company's proposal went beyond a simple business deal.

He stressed that it represented an opportunity to strengthen Nigeria’s economy by keeping important assets within the nation.

He added: “We wanted to become a Fortune 500 company and we estimated what we needed. It’s not naira, it’s huge dollars.

"Energy security is crucial for a country that doesn’t produce enough electricity for its roughly 200 million citizens.”