Last week, Mele Kyari the embattled group managing director of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) rose to a spirited defence of himself, his colleagues and the company. ”We are not criminals, we are not thieves”, Kyari asserted in a drow!!¡ning voice apparently overwhelmed by that of millions of Nigerians denouncing the “sins” of NNPCL.
Kyari was apparently responding to the Babel of voices condemning NNPCL’s determination to sustain the importation of petrol when Dangote Refinery is ready to fill the void that has for decades drained a minimum of $20 billion annually from Nigeria’s lean foreign reserves.
Kyari made two critical assertions during his defence of NNPCL at the National Assembly. “The oil and gas industry is bleeding, but NNPCL is not to blame,” he asserted. The assertion that the oil and gas industry is bleeding is a gross understatement.
The situation is worse than that. The claim that NNPCL is not to blame for the precarious situation in the oil and gas industry is a sad reminder of Adam’s defense in the Garden of Eden when he defiantly ate the forbidden fruit and instead of owning up, he blamed the Almighty God for giving him the “woman” who gave him the fruit to eat.
NNPCL is the regulator of the oil and gas industry. It is responsible for anything happening in the industry. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is the regulator of the banking industry in Nigeria. It has liquidated a number of banks that irreversibly fall short of its requirements. It has imposed monetary sanctions on banks for less grievous offences.
Conversely, NNPCL has never rebuked the international oil companies (IOCs) operating in Nigeria for their alleged act of sabotage.
If NNPCL claims not to know the high velocity criminals stealing 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the well heads of the IOCs and pipelines, then it is a failed regulator that should be disbanded with ignominy.
Kyari’s defence of NNPCL is rather belated. Nigerians have made up their minds about the company. The truth is that NNPCL is a marketer’s nightmare. It is easier to sell ice to the Eskimos than to sell NNPCL to Nigerians.
That is because as a nation with a one-handed economy where crude oil exports account for 90 per cent of the foreign exchange trickling into Nigeria’s reserves, NNPCL controls the flow of forex into Nigeria. Ironically, it has done so in a less desirable manner.
The management of petrol subsidy is one area through which NNPCL has impoverished Nigeria. In December 2017, a few months after the removal of petrol subsidy by the President Muhammadu Buhari administration, NNPC announced that petrol consumption has dropped to 28 million liters per day.
On February, 2018 when surging oil price pushed the landing cost of petrol above official pump price, forcing government to tacitly restore petrol subsidy, NNPC suddenly announced that daily consumption has risen to 60 million liters at a time when the 150 per cent hike in the pump price of petrol had forced many motorists to dump their cars.
Since then NNPCL has kept the figure on Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption as a closely guarded secret. Sometime in 2018, Femi Falana, a senior advocate of Nigeria (SAN) demanded explanation for NNPC’s claims on daily petrol consumption. Leveraging on the Freedom of Information Act, Falana called on NNPC to furnish him with documents confirming the importation of the quantity of petrol claimed by the corporation.
NNPC’S lawyer warned Falana in an irksome letter that the documents he demanded were trade secrets not covered by the Freedom of Information Act and that NNPC cannot release them.
The simple truth is that NNPC’s figures cannot be substantiated with import documents.
In 2021, the then NNPC hiked the daily petrol consumption figure to 92 million liters.
The figure was eventually raised to 102 million liters on claims that 42 million liters were smuggled daily into tiny Benin Republic, Togo, Niger, Chad and even Ghana.
That allegation sparked a showdown between NNPC and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). The NCS argued that a minimum of 2,000 articulated trucks were needed daily to smuggle 42 million liters of petrol into the five neighbouring countries. NCS asked NNPC to tell the world the border route that would contain that number of trucks daily. The NCS demand elicited a deafening silence from NNPC.
Last week as Kyari offered his defence of the embattled company, the senate leveled fresh allegations that no one in NNPCL could defend.
The senate contended that the federal government allocated $1.5 billion for the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refinery in 2021 and demanded to know what happened to the money. No one responded.
Kyari has a daunting task in convincing Nigerians that NNPCL is not responsible for Nigeria’s economic predicament. He has to argue with irrevocable shipping documents that Nigeria consumes 102 million liters of petrol daily rather than the 28 million announced on December 31, 2017.
Even if Kyari is able to convince anyone that NNPCL knows nothing about the generals and admirals behind the stealing of 450,000 barrels of crude oil daily, it would have succeeded in indicting itself as a failed regulator that cannot protect Nigeria’s major source of foreign exchange.
NNPCL’s defence looks so porous and illogical that it could collapse like a pack of cards. The company busted its chance of clearing its name on the petrol subsidy scam when it told Falana that daily petrol consumption figure was trade secret not covered by the Freedom of Information Act.
If the company had nothing to hide it could have released the information to the senior advocate for effective dissemination to the public.
Besides, NNPCL is either corrupt or incompetent. Either of those shortfalls is responsible for the frittering away of the $1.5 billion allocated for the rehabilitation of Port Harcourt Refinery.
The company’s inability to keep the nation’s four refineries on stream has taken a heavy toll on Nigeria foreign reserves.
