Socio-economic problems in this country are recurrent and often defy all conceiveable solutions. They may be seasonal or annual, depending on their nature and the conditions facilitating them. The commonest among them are the acute shortage of certain essential commodities which are so fundamental to the basic existence of the people. The scarcity of basic needs have always been responsible for immense hardship to the masses and gravely injurious to economic development apart from causing serious social unrests and unwarranted upheavals.
These vices continue to rear their ugly heads because government was always unable to take urgent steps to nip them in the bud whenever they became evident. In that way, the spate of energy crises Nigerians have been baffling with over a long period of time had forced them to re-experience the vagaries of life that bothers their stone-age ancestors who used firewood and charcoal as means of energy for heating their environment and cooking.
For quite sometimes now, acute shortages of cooking materials such as Dual Purpose Kerosene DPK and Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LGP simply called cooking gas are becoming scarce in the market with attendant spiraling prices which are becoming prohibitive. It is obvious the volume of these vital cooking materials produced locally are currently grossly inadequate, unable to serve the needs for more than 1ne hundred Nigerians. Despite the abundance of such resources under Nigeria’s soil it still imports more than half its total requirements. It can therefore be rightly argued that the poor performance of local refineries and the inconsistent import trend to supplement insufficient local production have been largely responsible for the acute scarcity of cooking materials.
As a result, unscrupulous business men have been embarking on sharp activities especially in places where the commodities are available for sale at more than one thousand Naira per gallon and a keg of twenty-five kg of cooking gas dispensed at four-thousand-five-hundred Naira. This is detrimental to majority of Nigerians who could not afford the hiked prices while the well-heeled and the wealthy one among them pay through their noses.
Confronted by flood of public complaints over the scarcity of the two commodities, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC blamed the development on the inability of major marketers to continue with the importation of the product and equally supplementing it with local production. However, contrary to NNPC’s claims that has been importing kerosene regularly, available records have shown that the last importation was in September last year while the three refineries had stopped production since October. One other reason that that contributed to the acute shortage of the products in recent times is the ‘Nigerian factor’ exhibited by Shylock marketers throughout the country who sell their consignment wholly to middlemen instead of vending them on their filling stations for the benefit of their consumers.
Six months ago Nigerians have bidded good bye to the acute scarcity of cooking gas but the same scenario is now being re-enacted with the same propensity and apathy as was experienced before. In July last year acute shortage of cooking gas had hit major cities across the country in the same manner as the current scarcity is taking the same ugly dimension with the price hitting the five-thousand Naira mark.
This development is certainly a setback to the Federal Government’s target of discouraging the use of dirty fuel for domestic use and deepening the use of the cooking gas. Another major constraint with kerosene scarcity is the issue of diversion, a sharp practice often deployed by greedy marketers who blend it with diesel to get higher volume. Nevertheless, the most worrisome of all their problems and constraints is the disturbing decision by petroleum marketers to suspend further importation of kerosene to their inability to source foreign exchange through the official window at the Central Bank.
The scarcity of keresone and cooking gas, if left unchecked, will terribly undermine the expected development of the Liquefied Petroleum LP Sector in the country which had in the recent past became the number one energy source for domestic and related commercial uses. And now, for the Federal Government to adequately address the issues surrounding the incessant scarcity of these vital commodities it has to go back to the drawing board and revitalize its 2007 policy which helped in generating some remarkable improvements in the sector. That will actually make the commodities relatively affordable to the lower stratum of the Nigerian society.
The cooking gas which had hitherto been the exclusive preserve of the rich is now becoming popular with the indigent as well as the low-income earners and those inhabiting the remotest parts of the rural areas.
It is, imperative, therefore, to sustain the improvements made in the last ten years with regards to the supply and availability of cooking gas in the country so that Nigerians could add or to cook their meals in relative comfort devoid of difficulties faced by their stone-age ancestors. With all said and done, it is still worthwhile to advise that more gas and kerosene terminals are to be constructed at the coasts and to also invest heavily in then transportation of the products by rail or by trucks. It is also important to supplement all these efforts by having enough distribution centres across the country.
