By Kingsley Omose
In the Punch Newspaper of August 7, 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) was reported to have claimed that Nigeria’s petrol import had reduced to an average of one billion litres monthly after President Bola Tinubu removed the fuel subsidy on May 29 last year.
The Punch Newspaper report went further to quote the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, as having said the following:
“The fuel subsidy was removed May 29, 2023, by Mr President, and at that time, the poorest of 40 per cent was only getting four per cent of the value, and basically, they were not benefitting at all. So it was going to be just a few.
“Another point that I think is important is that nobody knows the consumption in Nigeria of petroleum. We know we spend $600m to import fuel every month, but the issue here is that all the neighbouring countries are benefitting.
“So, we are buying not just for Nigeria, we are buying for countries to the east, almost as far as Central Africa. We are buying. We are buying for countries to the North and we are buying for countries to the West.
“And so we have to ask ourselves as Nigerians, how long do we want to do that for, and that is the key issue regarding the issue of petroleum pricing.”
The issue is that these government officials and government agencies continue to dish out astonishing figures for petrol importation and the related cost and then confuse the equation by not knowing what quantity of petrol is being consumed locally due to the effect of smuggling.
These government officials and government agencies bank on the fact that many Nigerians may not like deep thinking and are aided in this regard by the media and journalists who like trending stories and abhor digging deep into those trends even though they are designed to confuse.
The first confusion in this report is that since May 29, 2023, when petrol subsidy was removed by PBAT, monthly petrol consumed in Nigeria has dropped from 2 billion litres monthly to one billion litres. This is what the NBS is claiming, but how factual is this claim?
So, the NBS is saying the one billion litres of petrol imported monthly from May 29, 2023, and at the cost of $600 million monthly, according to Wale Edun, means that under the Buhari administration, at least 2 billion litres of petrol was imported monthly at $1.2 billion.
To clear this confusion, it means a forensic audit, pre – and post-May 29, 2023, should provide details of the various shipments of petrol to Nigeria, the owners and sizes of these ships, the ports they originated from, the ports in Nigeria where the petrol was discharged, and the dates of discharge, and the cost to the Nigerian state.
Again, the imported 2 billion litres monthly petrol pre-May 29, 2023, or the imported one billion litres monthly petrol, thereafter, had to have been discharged by these ships into storage facilities at the various points of discharge, again information that is easily verifiable.
So, following the line of payment, one would expect that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN should either have paid $1.2 billion before May 29, 2023, or $600 million, thereafter, and, every month, did so on documents verified from NPA, NCS, NMDPRA, NNPC, and other related government agencies and parties regarding actual volumes received and stored.
Now, you can’t walk into any tank farms where the petrol has been stored after being discharged by the ships to lift petrol with a truck unless that truck is properly licensed under the appropriate trucking and marketing unions. Since the FG pays the bridging costs, NMDPRA is the gatekeeper.
Each truck can load 33,000 litres of petrol from the loading bay in each of these tank farms, meaning that under the Buhari administration, 66,606 trucks or 33,303 trucks since May 29, 2023, would have been required to move either 2 billion or one billion litres of petrol monthly.
Again, no truck loaded with petrol leaves the loading bay of the tank farm without having a designated petrol station within Nigeria as the point of discharge because only authorised marketers are allowed to buy petrol, and remember it is FG through NMDPRA that pays for delivery from tank farm loading bays to the petrol station.
This is the petrol lifted from designated loading bays by trucks meant for designated petrol stations across the country, that are known to NMDPRA, and owned by oil marketers or their affiliates, according to Wale Edun, somehow, these 33,000 litres truck of petrol find their way illegally across the border to other West and Central African countries?
Why will officials of FG, CBN, NNPCL, NUPRC, NMDPRA, NPA, NCS, tank farm owners, truck owners and drivers, petroleum marketers, petrol station owners, local and foreign banks, foreign ship owners, foreign refineries, foreign governments not want to undermine Dangote Refinery?
It is against this context that we can begin to grasp the travails of the Dangote Refinery as it soldiers on to get local crude oil for refining against a massive wall of resistance. Should Dangote Refinery fail, this would be a complete calamity for the black race, and even with funds sourced locally, Africa is destined to remain backwards.
Kingsley Omose is a public policy analyst
