At last what the petroleum products marketers got from the lame-duck government of former President Goodluck Jonathan on their subsidy claims amounted to a verbal promise. The perfidious strike they organized could not intimidate Jonathan into issuing a post-dated sovereign debt instrument that would keep the marketers’ fraudulent subsidy claims away from the prying eyes of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Unfortunately, they inflicted incredible damage on the economy. The losses in monetary terms and human lives were colossal and incalculable. It was “the mother of all strikes”. Never in the history of Nigeria had a strike sailed perilously close to shutting down the economy.
When the senior staff of the defunct National Electric Power Authority (NEPA), went on strike in 1991 and threw the country into darkness, a special court set up by military dictator, Ibrahim Babangida, sentenced the leaders of the strike to death. They spent years in jail before their sentences were commuted. No one has lifted a finger in protest against the ring leaders of the last strike.
Ironically they are all denying any involvement in the civilian coup.
Jonathan probably underestimated the marketers’ capacity for insidious back-stabbing. The former president was their best friend and never expected them to gang up against him during his final hours in Aso Rock.
Jonathan was the best thing to happen to the marketers. Under his watch they stole more than a quarter of the nation’s budget in petrol subsidy with impunity. The official pump price of petrol at N87 per litre is only enforceable in the south-west and parts of Abuja. Even in Bayelsa, Jonathan’s home state where the bulk of Nigeria’s crude oil is drilled, marketers sell subsidized petrol at N120 per litre at the best of times.
Jonathan knew that the subsidy was not getting to most of the consumers. But he also knew that his party men were using it to grease the palms of their foot soldiers. So, he played along. The marketers used and dumped the ex-president.Jonathan himself felt betrayed by the action of the marketers. He openly admitted that it was an act of sabotage. That is the gospel truth. The strike was the manifestation of the raw greed of a bunch of perfidious men who can do anything for money.
The marketers have taken control of the downstream sector of the oil industry. They determine the pump price of petrol without input from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) which is supposed to be the regulator of the industry. The depot owners have unilaterally hiked the ex-depot price of petrol. The retailers only add their own margin as it pleases them. Throughout last week the depot owners sold petrol to retail outlet operators at N110 per litre as against the regulated ex-depot price of N82.
The subsidy claims that instigated the perfidious strike had already been extorted from consumers. The same marketers would blackmail the federal government and collect more in the name of subsidy. Nigeria is burning its candle at both ends on the issue of petrol subsidy. The retailers sold to consumers at N150 per litre at the beginning of the week. By the weekend the pump price dropped to N120. It may remain so for some time. Even the major marketers who grudgingly maintained the official pump price of N87 had a way of extorting money from consumers. Most of them collect “gate fees” of N100 from motorists.
Jonathan is to blame for the marketers’ blackmail. The former president had all the time in the world to make Nigeria self-sufficient in refined petroleum products but opted to give party stalwarts the chance to fleece Nigeria through fuel imports.
Two weeks ago the DPR made a rather belated move at reducing the country’s shameful dependence on imported petroleum products. The regulator offered incentives to prospective investors willing to build modular refineries in Nigeria. Modular refineries are crude oil processing plants with limited product range. They produce kerosene, diesel, petrol and low pour fuel oil. They have refining capacities ranging from 1, 000 to 10, 000 barrels of crude oil per day (BPD).
DPR’s move to woo investors into setting up modular refineries is too little, too late. Why did it take the regulator so long to act? No one knows why DPR started luring investors in the dying days of the Jonathan administration. Was the former president against the idea of breaking Nigeria’s shameful dependence on imported refined petroleum products which served as conduit for siphoning money into the pockets of the ruling party’s top shots? Was DPR’s decision not to advice Jonathan on the need to intensify the search for investors in the downstream sector of the oil industry an act of sabotage? While the search for answers to those posers continues, the truth is that the damage has been done. Jonathan might go down in history as the man who ruled Nigeria when it made the highest earnings from crude oil, but refused to invest in refining facilities.
What Nigeria needs now is concerted efforts at making the country self-sufficient in crude oil refining. That requires a more ingenious marketing strategy than luring a handful of pocket-size investors to set up micro-refineries.
