APPARENTLY, the more things change the
more they remain the same in Nigeria. After
months of denying what most economists and
financial experts had already known the
Federal Government has finally admitted that
N774 million per day or N24bn per month is
now being spent to subsidise the importation
of petroleum products.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation,
NNPC, while lifting the veil over the badly kept
secret by the Buhari administration also
placed most of the blame on smuggling along
Nigeria’s borders with neighbouring states.
According to the narrative, which rings like a
familiar tune from the much-discredited past
administrations, the consumption of fuel had
gone up from 35 million litres to 50 million
litres in recent months.
That 42 per cent jump which should have
resulted in massive security interventions and
the arrest of some culprits has merely led to
the wringing of hands by Nigeria’s security
agencies – Directorate of State Services
(DSS), the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS)
and the National Intelligence (NIA). Instead of
these bodies charged with security the vital
economic interests of the nation swinging into
action to deal with those diverting our
imported petroleum products to foreign
countries and causing hardship for Nigerians,
the impression Nigerians get is one of a
government totally helpless to halt this
increasingly crippling economic sabotage.
One of the reasons that President
Muhammadu Buhari gave for making himself
the Minister of Petroleum Resources was that
he wanted to sanitise the oil industry,
especially the NNPC. Obviously, little has been
achieved in that direction in view of the
assertion by the President of the Senate, Dr.
Bukola Saraki, that: “the NNPC stinks”, at a
recent public hearing of the Senate Committee
on Petroleum Resources (Downstream)
attended by the NNPC GMD, Dr. Maikanti Baru
and the Corporation’s top brass.
We had expected, as part of the “change” that
the APC had promised Nigerians during the
2015 campaigns that by now the NNPC’s
affairs, which have traditionally been shrouded
in secrecy, would have been made more
transparent. We had thought the Corporation
would have been unbundled, privatised or
made a more efficient state-run business like
Malaysia’s PETRONAS and Brazil’s
PETROBRAS. What we see, instead, is the
retention of the discredited, corruption-prone
model which the PricewaterhouseCoopers
(PwC) audit of the Corporation’s accounts in
2014/2015 had declared outmoded.
Unless we reform the NNPC, deregulate the
downstream sector of the oil industry and
encourage the profusion of refineries in
Nigeria, nothing will change. The Corporation
will remain the cesspool of corruption. Fuel
subsidy payments (whether real or imagined)
will continue. Importation of petroleum
products, fuel scarcity and the diversion of
petroleum products to neighbouring countries
will never stop.
We are still waiting for the “change” in the oil
sector.