As I write this piece, president Buhari is in transit, on his way to attend the US-Africa Summit in the United States, while Nigeria is caught in the grip of persistent fuel scarcity.
Like a bad joke, fuel scarcity started in the nation’s capital of Abuja and has spread her ugly tentacles across Nigerian cities.
But for poor leadership, Nigeria should not have had any experience for scarcity of petroleum products, especially considering her status as a oil producing state and leading member of Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC.
So far, there are unverified rumours of a pending withdrawal of subsidy, ahead of the June 2023 proposed date, by the Buhari government of the All Progressives Congress, APC.
The murky politics of removal or not of fuel subsidy on petroleum products is a subject that has different reasons, some tenable, others unacceptable, but majorly unacceptable to Nigerians albeit their gullibility to understand, accept, line, hook and sinker, the reasons adduced by president Buhari and his government for fuel subsidy removal.
Motor park and pedestrian economists, as illiterate as they may be, understand the political undertones and drawbacks of fuel subsidy removal, as an index on the cost of goods and social services across Nigeria.
With a open-ended maintenance contract on Nigerian refineries, which had lingered under three presidents, Yar’adua, Jonathan and presently Buhari, gulping almost a billion dollars to repair and fix them, the refineries, like another agency, exactly the Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC; repair work on the refineries has become a conduit pipe for politicians and officials of the NNPC to steal and divert funds, especially considering the fact that general elections are around the corner, to fund campaign logistics – given the fact that members of Nigerian political parties do not pay membership dues!
Penultimate last week, the American equivalent of the FBI, the Department of State Security, DSS, issued a 48-hours deadline to the NNPC and Independent Petroleum Marketers, to make fuel available or it would trigger her officials across Nigeria to embark on physical intervention at petrol filling stations to clamp down on stations hoarding petroleum products. In the midst of lingering fuel scarcity, the NNPC had regaled Nigerians with infantile excuses of bad roads and construction of roads as factors responsible for scarcity of fuel, while claiming that it has enough stock of petroleum products for 30 days consumption. Independent petroleum marketers has denied the excuses given by the NNPC. They claim it takes them three or more days to load products at NNPC depots – they claim that, previously, it usually takes them about three hours to load at NNPC depots while they have to contend with payment of multiple charges. Independent marketers say they presently buy products from private depots, far above the rate of NNPC, and this has made them to sell at between N230/N250 per litre. In reality, petrol sells at between N250 and N280 per litre across Nigeria!
This article will not digress into the macro-economic and social implications of fuel selling at the above rates. That is another topic on its own.
In the midst of inexcusable, perennial, lingering fuel scarcity, where is the substantive petroleum minister?
With no comment, action or solution on petrol scarcity by the minister of petroleum, it is time for president Buhari to sack his petroleum minister. The fact that the Minister of Petroleum has failed is not debatable. President Buhari has enough reasons to sack his petroleum minister – stealing of crude oil; open-ended repair of refineries; inability to bring any one to book for stealing/diversion of crude oil; zero remittance(s) of oil export proceeds into the treasury; official connivance/collusion of military officials in aiding/abetting of crude oil stealing/diversion.
It is an insult on the pride and intelligence of Nigerians that Nigeria should pin her hopes on the launching of a private refinery for the availability of fuel supply. The Dangote refinery is a private sector initiative, developed and founded on the principles of business management – it will not sell her products on the basis of charity, like a salvation army, nonprofit organisation. Dangote refinery is a deliberately set up business entity, to make profit for her promoters albeit the NNPC grabbed her shares by coercion on the excuse of ‘strategic interest’.
My late father, God bless his soul, as a globally well-sailed sailor, once told us, his children, upon his return from his maiden work visit to the United States, in 1974, that he saw Americans throwing food into garbage cans. Upon inquiry, he was told that their government subsidize food and other agricultural products. Even today, the US and other European nations subsidize food. What does the Nigerian government subsidize for her people, when in the 1999 Constitution, as amended, it is clearly stated therein, that it is the primary responsibility of government to cater for the welfare of Nigerian citizens.
If the minister of petroleum does not have the capacity to function in that office, president Buhari must immediately relieve him of that office and the responsibilities attached to that portfolio.
Also, the never-ending, open-ended, on going repair work of the refineries should be fast-tracked to resume production before the Dangote refinery comes on stream in the second quarter of 2023. That will be the best alternative solution to check the commercial, market value of Dangote petrol to Nigerians. As our elders say, “Children whose father is a successful farmer has no reasons to starve of hunger.” As a nation blessed with enormous quantity of fossil products, Nigeria has no excuse to experience fuel scarcity and high cost of petroleum products.