IPMAN, MOMAN and mammon worship

Refined petroleum product marketers have drawn a battle line with the federal government. The Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) and the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) have presented the federal government with an amorphous demand for refund of what they describe as colossal losses their members incurred as a result of the sudden climb down in the pump price of premium motor spirit (PMS), also known as petrol.
The marketers are angry that the federal government did not consult them before the vote-catching decision to cut the pump price of petrol by N10.
The minister of petroleum resources, Mrs. Diezani Alison-Madueke had on Sunday, January 18, 2015 took the nation, especially the marketers, off guard with an announcement cutting the pump price of petrol from N97 to N87.
The problem of the marketers is that the price review this time was downward. On several occasions the marketers had smiled to the banks with huge gains emanating from a sudden upward review of the pump price of petrol.
For instance, on New Year’s Day in 2012, the federal government announced a sudden deregulation of the pump price of petrol.
That singular decision pushed the pump price of petrol from N65 to N141 per litre. The marketers who had expected the move had created artificial scarcity in the land by openly hoarding the product or reducing sales by dispensing with one pump, thus lengthening the queues and frustrating motorists. While that party lasted in 2012, no marketer complained. There are no indications that the federal government consulted the marketers before deregulating the pump price of petrol and handing them a profit margin of N71 per litre in January 2012. Most of the marketers had huge stocks at the time of the deregulation. They sold and raked in billions of naira in profit. No one complained. The members of MOMAN have developed intrinsic and amorous love for mammon.
Now a downward review of pump price resulting in the loss of less than N10 per litre is taking the marketers to everyone from the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC) to Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA).
The marketers do not even know how much they lost to the sudden price cut. No one could attach a figure to the loss the marketers purportedly sustained. What they are demanding to be paid from public till borders on blackmail and intimidation. Some of the marketers are still enjoying the N1.3 trillion they extorted from the federal government as subsidy for petrol that never landed the shores of Nigeria.
But the marketers know what they are pursuing and when to pursue it. Politicians know that the marketers have deep pockets. In an election period, no one in Aso Rock would ignore the demands of anyone who could deliver either votes or the cash to lure voters.
Most of the marketers are cronies or blood relatives of the men in the corridors of power. Therefore, few would be astonished if government bows to the marketers’ blackmail.
MOMAN is the synonym of mammon. Nothing can douse the propensity of its members for indecent and idolatrous romance with mammon. None of the marketers complaining today about losses to the petrol pump price cut has reckoned with the mindless profiteering in diesel and aviation fuel in the last six months.
Industry watchers contend that since oil price started tumbling in July 2014, marketers have chalked up N126 billion in profits from over-pricing the pump price of diesel. Those who sell aviation fuel might have raked in even more profit.
The federal government has maintained a deafening silence on the mindless exploitation perpetrated by the marketers of diesel and aviation fuel. Government has deregulated the prices of the two products leaving them to be determined by interplay of the forces of demand and supply.
But the prices of the two products have defied the dictates of those forces. In June 2014 when crude oil price hovered around $115 per barrel, the pump price of diesel and aviation fuel ranged between N150 and N160 per litre respectively.
Even when oil price tumbled to $48 in the closing week of January, the prices remained the same. Last week the PPPRA’s products pricing template fixed the open market pump price of diesel at N108 per litre. But no one is enforcing it.
The men in Aso Rock might have decided to shun the bare-face exploitation of diesel and aviation fuel consumers for political reasons. Even the PPPRA, which as the name implies, is legally charged with the responsibility for regulating the price of petroleum products, has not lifted a finger in protest against the merciless grip of MOMAN and IPMAN on diesel and aviation fuel consumers. In developed economies where there are no subsidies, prices of petroleum products were freely adjusted down as crude oil price tumbled. That is where the forces of demand and supply act as invisible hand on the price mechanism. Since the greed of Nigerian petroleum products marketers has obstructed the functions of that invisible hand on the price mechanism of diesel and aviation fuel, PPPRA should move in to save consumers.