- By Mike Kebonkwu
Nigeria has huge deposit of hydrocarbon and ranks number 10 in the world amongst oil producing countries, second in Africa only after Angola. We have four refineries built in the seventies and eighties now decrepit and comatose with zero production. The Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is the government subsidiary that manages the oil industry and the refineries. The NNPC has a huge workforce, earning hefty salaries more than any other department in the civil service; probably aside the Central Bank of Nigeria.
There is budgetary allocation for the NNPC, with humungous amount for regular turn-around maintenance of the refineries. Yet the refineries are not producing and nobody bothers to interrogate what they are doing with the budgetary allocations and payment for the turn-around maintenance. What are you maintaining, are you maintaining something that is dead, something that is not functioning?
The NNPC is merely operating like a supermarket, or Alaba Market traders, existing only for the sole purpose of dispensing imported fuel to other marketers or retailing outlets; leaving the four refineries dead and unattended to. The NNPC has become a huge sleaze that needs to be overhauled or dismantled. Now, Aliko Dangote’s has established a world class refinery which has come on stream in just about eight years. For the NNPC for several decades, it cannot fix even one of its refineries. Today, the NNPC is scrambling to be the sole distributor and establish monopoly over the Dangote refinery.
Nobody is thinking of auditing the sleaze in NNPC and its subsidiaries because we operate inherently a corrupt bureaucracy with official imprimatur. We have perennial fuel scarcity and long queue at the petrol stations with arbitrary pricing of the product in the name of free market and the regulatory agency is bemused and mute.
Some analysts and scholars argue that we enjoy the cheapest petrol in the world using comparative analysis of what people pay in other countries. However, these linear scholars fail to juxtapose the earning powers (basic minimum wage) in those countries with Nigeria.
The masses are buffeted with every conceivable manner of taxes on goods and services which petroleum product is one of them. We have never had any record of NNPC satisfying our domestic consumption of gasoline at any time not to talk of exporting to neighbouring countries; I am not talking about unofficial smuggling of fuel through black market channels, by equally blacklegs facilitated by security agents and border guards.
Everything about the oil industry in Nigeria is opaque and shrouded in official secrecy. The NNPC is a heist run by a power cartel that is so influential within the corridors of power. Our problem in the oil industry is corruption, not subsidy on petrol. We cannot get anything right with deep seated corruption in high and low places protected by institutions of government; the security and the judiciary. This is the reason why a former governor is able to evade arrest and remains a fugitive and has not been apprehended. This is the reason people accused of corruption after tenure as state chief executives are sitting in the National Assembly making laws for us. This is the reason why the former government also granted state pardon to former governors and felons convicted and jailed for corruption.
The subsidy on petroleum products is to make Nigerians enjoy affordable petrol because of the central place it occupies in our economy. Let us not forget the fact also that we are an oil producing country. In any case, there is no earthly reason why Nigeria should import petroleum product if we have competent people running our state bureaucracy. Countries all over the world subsidize one commodity or the other depending on the importance placed on the commodity in the lives of the people; agriculture, food, health just name it. It is beyond dispute that government is paying subsidy but nobody knows what the government is paying as subsidy and who the beneficiaries of the subsidy are. The government has left the subsidy management to a phoney cartel that manipulates the system without proper documentation or record. The cartel in the oil industry operates like the Sicilian Mafia enjoying official imprimatur at the same time.
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Petrol is a major source of power that touches on the lives of virtually every Nigerian without exception; from the schoolchildren that commute to school daily, the farmer that has to carry his produce to the urban centres, the hairdresser and household consumption, to power generator etc. The government rather than identify and deal with the cartel has decided to impose collective punishment on the ordinary citizens by removing the subsidy. With the recent hike in price of petrol, life has become unbearable and people can no longer afford basic necessities of life because of the multiplier effect of the fuel hike on other goods and services. This has brought untold hardship, hunger and mass poverty on the people.
Successive governments had flirted with the idea of the removal of petrol subsidy which had been met with protests and resistance. But at the inauguration of the current government, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, firm but with casual mien, announced that the ‘fuel subsidy is gone’! Expectedly, petrol price was hiked from N165 per litre to about N620 per litre as the official price which only operates at the NNPC outlets. Now the price of petrol per litre has been jacked up again to almost N1,000. With this, everything that the worker earns goes into paying for petrol in one form or the other. This is because the hike has led to incremental prices on goods and services, engendering immiseration and mass poverty.
The mass poverty in the land, hunger and insecurity cannot be solved through handouts and palliatives. Government cannot solve it forcefully by imposing price control, after all there is no production and farmers are not going to the farms because of kidnappers, bandits and insurgents. Protesters, whether peaceful or not, may be tried for treasonable felony but it will not stop the welling anger that may soon burst. There is an unusual calm in the land which portends grave augury; it is peace of the grave yard; something may give.
Going forward, the brave thing to do is for Mr President to do something novel that has never been done before by any regime or government in Nigeria; restore the subsidy regime and take on the cartel and the masses will join the fight, and he will succeed. This will reduce the hunger, anger and mass poverty.
Guess what, he would have put smiles on the faces of Nigerians that he may not need to campaign for re-election in 2027; it will come on a platter. The cartel in the oil industry should be exposed and prosecuted for corruption. The people behind the insecurity in the country are the cartel in the oil industry and the subsidy scam; they are the corrupt politicians that have looted the country to a state of coma, the bandits, insurgents, unknown gunmen and other criminal elements. These are the enemies of this country.
Furthermore, there should be comprehensive audit of the NNPC and those behind the sleaze in the oil industry should be brought to book rather than impose collective punishment on the people. Mr President, one thing is certain, if you make up your mind to go after the enemies of this country, you will have the back of the people and you will succeed. It is a fight for all of us, and the heavens will not fall. The government has to cut down on cost of governance, reduce the duplications of ministries and departments; cut down on the legion of aides and special assistants and stop lavish, obscene official lifestyle. To get the country going again, government has to reconsider reinstating the subsidy regime for whatever it is worth to reduce the hunger, anger and mass poverty. It is better to kill corruption than impose collective punishment on the masses.
•Kebonkwu Esq writes from Abuja.