By Zik Gbemre
…Bad fuel saga is another conspiracy, a racket to enrich a few and suffer the majority helpless populace.
…The conspiracy is made possible because politicians in power continue to rule without accountability.
…Nigeria is the only major oil and gas producer that depends solely on imported fuel and the only one that cannot give accurate figures on the volume of hydrocarbon it produces.
The conspiracy to import bad fuel as a ploy to increase pump price, again, exposes the insensitivity of government and the wickedness of officeholders towards the populace.
It is bad enough that a government that said subsidy was a fraud is, in power, paying record subsidy sums. On top of that, the same government is conjuring all kinds of naughtiness to further choke the helpless populace.
Across the landscape, is there anything the President Buhari administration would do right? We have one of the finest blends of crude oil in the world, easier to refine, experts have proven.
But with the raw materials at our fingertips, we are unable to refine. For the past three months, our moribund refineries have incurred over N11 Billion in deficits. That is for redundant directors, managers and staff receiving fat pays for turning no income over.
Okay, we then decide to import, including buying from nations who do not even drill a pint of crude oil/condensate. Now even the dependence on imports is as problematic as the citizens’ sufferings forced the willful failure to work the home refineries.
What is this nonsense about bad fuel? The gullible industry regulators, NNPC Ltd and the DPR and PPPRA, now yoked as Upstream Regulatory Commission and Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NPRA) would always boast of multiple stages of quality assurance carried out on imported to ensure what is brought in is good.
But here we are, faced with bad fuel from nowhere. Funny enough, the same stakeholders who caused this shame are the ones to probe themselves. That’s why nobody will ever get identified and punished for this willful failure.
Instead, it is the helpless populace who have to suffer scarcity of petrol, stay in queues, buy at outrageously inflated pump price, resulting in disruption of businesses and hike in transport fares.
This willful failure of government and its agency to be accountable is why the upstream sector is also so opaque to the extent that government can’t give accurate, reliable figures on what is being produced in the operating space.
In Saudi Arabia, the oil company is monitored from ground, down to export, refining and retail. In Nigeria, with a lack of accountability, including encouraging sabotage, no one can say how much crude oil/gas/condensate is produced in Nigeria.
It is all about estimates, cooked up figures. Because of the willful lapses, even the international oil companies (IOCs) are taking advantage, flowing with the tide at the detriment of the common good.
Shame on Nigeria that we import petroleum products. Why can’t the IOCs and Nigerian companies refine at least 50% of the hydrocarbon they produce in the country. Politicians in power appoint cronies as GMDs, MDs, minister of petroleum, to control NNPC, the petroleum industry and the humongous EuroDollar accruing there from it.
And the systemic failure is profound, permeates all facets of the nation. Just what is working well? From health, education, transport, NPA, politics, agriculture, name it. We are just going through the motion, not because we are just going through the motion. Nothing is working.
What a country? Such a shame.
Zik Gbemre
February 18, 2022
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