LET THEM DRINK THEIR OI
BY Olusola Ajiboye,
Never before has the Nigerian oil sector experienced a ferocious competitive war as it is at the moment. Never has players, may I say gladiators, spoil for wars of attrition in a volatile sector that determines the health of the country’s budget.
But here we are; the oil sector is made more volatile by dirty games contrived by entrenched interests within the industry and outsiders with links to the system.
As a major crude oil exporter in the 60s and 70s, Nigeria met her domestic oil demands with huge revenue and foreign reserves but receded to a perpetual import dependent Nation today.
No thanks to a Cartel which ensures that all her four (4) refineries remain unproductive and moribund
In all the years of rot and systemic collapse of the oil refineries, the gladiators kept their entrenched interests insulated from reforms that should serve as checks on indiscretions in a sector regarded as Nigeria’s cash cow.
The serial mismanagement has either rubbished effective implementation of the Petroleum Reform Act, or rendered it a mere paperwork.
The Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is a trajectory of metamorphosis from management restructuring, nomenclature change, and unbundling, to injection of private investment initiatives. Unfortunately all have failed to wake the slumbering oil – conglomerate to action.
Billions of hard earned foreign revenues have gone down the drain on Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) of the company’s refineries.
One Point Four ($1.4) million Dollars recently went into reactivating the Port – Harcourt Refinery only to produce huge billowing smokes. No litre of refined crude – oil came out of the Refinery!
For this and previous malfeasances by industry players, no reprimand, no arrest, no prosecution in connection to the turn-around fiasco is known to have been ordered.
NNPC, either as a corporation or a company continues to wear the tag of a key oil outfit, which operates with impunity, prompting many, to question if NNPCL, was designed to make Nigeria an oil exporter or importer?
The bone of contention between Aliko Dangote and NNPCL since the former built and commissioned a Six Hundred and Fifty (650) Thousand barrel per day capacity oil refinery, reveals the machinations of a Cartel driven oil sector wrapped in secrecy for decades.
Dangote Refinery demonstrates rare courage and audacity of an investor who looked straight into the faces of a few mafiosos holding the Nation by the jugular. These are individuals who ensured that Nigeria continues to spend hard sourced billions of public funds which end up in their pockets.
Having turned NNPCL into a mere rental and importer company, the mafiosos are incensed by any attempt to change the evil status quo.
Such is their hatred for Aliko Dangote who, in a span of seven (7) years, conceived, built and commissioned the largest single train refinery in Africa.
They thought initially that Dangote could not do it or thought he could be frustrated to abandon the twenty ($20) billion dollar project midway. The negative devices failed but the oil cabal will not succumb without a fight concorted in blackmail, sabotage of crude oil supplies and deliberate undermining of downstream petroleum pricing. Again, all the Shenanigans have failed.
Aliko Dangote has been lampooned as a monopolist who craves to swallow others in competition. But this is a theory lacking evidential support.
The oil magnate has not declared himself a monopolist but has not hidden his intention to truly domesticate upstream and downstream oil production to serve the interest of Nigeria.
The recent face off between Aliko Dangote and Ahmed Farouk,Chief Executive Officer of Nigeria Mainstream and Downstream Petroleum Authority (NMDSRA) is a vivid reflection of an unending desperation by importers to frustrate domestication of production, and ensuring price affordability in the oil sector.
It shows misplacement of priorities and crass interests by runners of the Nigeria oil industry
. Rather than generate healthy competition among players for consumer benefits, oil – cabals prefer that Nigeria remains perpetually import dependent.
The Byzantine administration of the country’s oil sector is a riddle unsolved.
Oil watchers have spoken severally on this opaque management at different times but the results is that those who talk do not know while those know don’t talk.
Nigeria is the only oil producing country in the world, without a functioning oil refinery. The only oil – producer that wholesomely import refined petroleum products.
It is difficult to analyse the oil sector in Nigeria without a reference to a Yoruba proverb, “O pa toro, o da nai nu” a trade in three pence, a loss in nine pence. In simple words, NNPCL is not run on profits but on liabilities, or more simply explained, is run to make profits for few pockets while bankrupting the Nation.
Ahmed Farouk and Gbenga Komolafe’s resignation over Aliko Dangote petition are evidences of many riddles unsolved in the oil sector.
More riddles will remain unsolved until a serious forensic audit of NNPCL and its subsidiaries is carried out..
The oil – sector is in dire need of an emergency declaration that will weed out innumerable cobwebs which make NNPCL a burden than a relief to Nigeria President Tinubu has to sanitise the oil sector by listening more to investors like Aliko Dangote who have taken great risks to build a functioning refinery from the scratch.
Despite Cartel contrived hurdles/landmines, Dangote Oil refines forty five (45) million litres of PMS and twenty five (25) million litres of Diesel per day, totaling over ninety (90%) percent.
This has reduced domestic consumption of petroleum to fifty two (52) million barrels per day. These are more than a low hanging fruit for the federal government to latch on for the good of the country.
The twenty (20) billion dollar- Dangote Refinery is currently exporting refined petroleum to United States, Asia and some African countries Whatever measures the government intends to deploy to safe the economy from further hemorrhaging must not exclude, elimination of imported refined petroleum products, optimum domestic production of crude oil, and exportation of petroleum products.
These are hard, but not impossible tasks to achieve.
If Ahmed Farouk and his co – importers insist on making Nigeria a dumping ground for all sorts of petroleum products, let Nigerians say no, by boycotting imported refined oil and telling them to drink their oil. Enough is enough.
Olusola Ajiboye is a veteran journalist and media consultant based in Osogbo, South West, Nigeria.