Still on fuel scarcity

ON 20th December, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) said the queues in filling stations across the country would disappear by the weekend.

That deadline has passed.  We are waiting.  At first, we believed that the scarcity was caused by several factors, like the Apapa road construction in Lagos State which caused problems for the tankers loading there and the fact that some elements were pushing for an increase in fuel price.

Nigerians are bearing the burden of the fuel scarcity basically as a result of the NNPC’s ineptitude. Depots that were loading 130 trucks a day are reportedly now only loading eight.

If the NNPC had been far-sighted enough, all of this would not be happening. The fact that Nigeria imported almost all its refined petroleum products in 2017 is disheartening.

Even more disheartening is the fact that all of the imports were unloaded in Lagos and trucks from the North, East, West and South all head to Lagos. We can’t use the pipelines because of vandalism. The refineries are not working. Even when they are, it is not at optimum capacity.

If the three refineries were working at optimum capacity, their products would still be insufficient for national consumption.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo sold the refineries to Dangote before he left office. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua reversed the sale when he assumed office, citing lack of transparency in the sales.

The refineries have not been resold ever since. What has happened several times is turnaround maintenance which gulps billions of Naira. After a few months, the refineries return to the pre-turnaround maintenance status.

Some privileged Nigerians use the turnaround maintenance to siphon money. This is a vicious cycle of corruption. During and after the fuel scarcity that happened early in the life of this administration, the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, was talking of modular refineries that could be built within one year. I have not heard anything on that ever since.

He never walked the talk. Now, we are waiting for Dangote’s refinery to kick off in 2019. It will produce enough for local consumption and even exports. But is this really how it should be?

Adeyemi Ahmed

Ilorin, Kwara State