ZIK GBEMRE SPEAKS ON THE FUEL CRISIS: FG, NNPC LTD CELEBRATION OF FAILURE, CORRUPTION IN THE NAME OF DEREGULATION
Inside same country, under same industry regulations, one fuel station, in the name of NNPC Ltd, dispenses petrol to consumers at N179, N180 per litre. Others as major marketers, private depot operators sell same product at various rates like N220, N230, N250, @N270 per litre.
Yet others as independent marketers dispense same petrol at unhindered N350, N380, N400, N450 even under queues, with impunity. In same country, under same regulations. Can there be a worse manifestation of a failed leadership, failed state, as currently prevail in Nigeria?
All of this happen under a government insensitive to the fact that hike in fuel price exerts the most traumatic impact on cost of living in Nigeria today. Fuel remains indispensable in the movement of goods and commodities as well as in rendering of basic services that can’t be provided without fueling power generators under epileptic public electricity.
Consequently any hike in pump price of fuel instigates spiral spike in prices of all goods and services, aggravating cost of leaving, because as they say in local parlance, “we all buy from same market.”
Rather than deal with the real issues -arrest oil theft, boost local refining through revival of collapsed public refineries while encouraging private establishment of more modern ones, FG through NNPC Ltd is making excuses for its failures.
The management of the nation’s mainstay, oil and gas, is entrusted in the hands of redundant executives, gluttons, seated in comfort zone, the NNPC Towers, whose only job is entertaining ‘August visitors’, showing off with recycling archaic speeches of exaggerated excellence and achievements in public fora.
Where it matters most, they are nominal partners, playing spectators while the oil and gas majors and marginal fields operators drill out and ship the products abroad in questionable accountability, so Mele Kyari can appropriate the sharing of proceeds to government stakeholders.
The worsening sleaze and redundancy in NNPC Ltd and its balkanised subsidiaries, much like DPR, NGC, NOSDRA and related industry regulators with bloated workforces have turned them into the albatross strangulating the oil and gas industry.
These government agencies have become scams, conduits for pillaging and sharing the commonwealth flowing from the industry into private vaults of the industry chiefs and the nation’s power brokers.
That is why going to two decades, we have all public refineries, Warri, Kaduna and Port Harcourt collapsed yet the redundant staff smile to the bank year in, year out with fat salaries and add-ons in promotions, training and sundry benefits that force the plants into multi-billion naira deficits.
You are compelled to ask the basic question, will President Mohammadu Buhari and Mele Kyari be robbing peter to pay paul if the refineries were their private investments? How wicked can public office holders be?
President Buhari, Timipre Sylva and Mele Kyari should mention any other major oil and gas producing nation in the world that depends solely on imported fuels to serve her citizens.
For DPR, whether the fragmented upstream, midstream or downstream fractures, like NOSDRA, the power to regulate has been eroded by greed and ineptitude, leaving the industry porous to regulatory infractions at the mercy of assets operators.
NUPRC today and NOSDRA have lost the capacity, even the moral strength, to respond to rampant spillages in the industry. Hiding behind overwhelmingly rampant assets vandalism, these regulators lay back in the comfort of their offices waiting for polluting assets owners to write JIV reports for willfully gullible fields officers who are remote controlled to blame almost every incident on third party encroachment.
Today NNPC Ltd and NUPRC can hardly agree on the actual volumes produced and exported by operators, neither can they ascertain the quantum stolen.
If NNPC Ltd was a private firm and not a government racket, will Mele Kyari still be able to keep his job when under his watch, tapping points on major crude lines for syphoning volumes of crude oil are hidden across the pipelines. Do they take Nigerians for a fool, that we are not aware that the profile oil thefts being uncovered are organised conspiracies known to the echelon of the industry players, military and top government officials?
Federal government and it’s NNPC Ltd are rather comfortable that the nation’s oil and gas industry strives on porous regulation so the corruption continues to swell private vaults while retarding the common good.
The solutions are simple. Revive local refining. Nigerian can’t be well depending on imported fuel. Achieve steady electricity power supply. Petrol and diesel will not be so much in demand if public power supply is steady.
It is shameful that militants known for stealing the crude oil are appeased with multi-billion naira gratifications contracts to provide official veil on organised oil theft in Nigeria.
I think the Federal government should hands off completely the operations of NNPC LTD, NGC, Refineries to private companies with specialised skills to manage and operate them. It is not the business of any government to manage and operate companies in the entire western countries.
The NNPC LTD, NGC, REFINERIES and other subsidiaries should be given and sold outrightly to international oil companies (IOCs) and indigenous private companies to operate and manage for sustainability. There is no difference between the old NNPC and new NNPC LTD.
Federal government should hands off completely the management and operations of all oil companies in Nigeria. We can’t be repeating same thing that doesn’t work.
We Mobilize Others To Fight For Individual Causes As If Those Were Our Causes!