Fuel Scarcity and the Gang up against Nigerians. – THISDAY.

Nigeria is indeed a complex country to govern and at times, I wonder if we know exactly what we want. This is because despite the fact that the All Progressives Congress candidate at the last Presidential Election, Muhammadu Buhari enjoyed an overwhelming support before and during the election, Nigerians who voted for him seemed to have constituted themselves into a major opposition block, hitting his administration from left, right and centre for failure to meet their expectations.

But can anyone blame us from crying out when the present administration, which rode into power on the crest of the word change, appears to be losing its way? The situation is made grimmer by what economic experts described as the looming budget crisis which they said will become manifest in January next year.
If the budget is a meal meant to sustain a family, it’s supposed to be nearing the final stage of cooking by now. Unfortunately, due to a combination of late constitution of the cabinet and the seeming lack of clarity in terms of policy direction, the present administration is still behaving as if it has the whole year to make up its minds on next year’s budget.
However, the most biting issue today is the recurrence of fuel scarcity, which appears to be beyond the comprehension of the present administration. It is not as if the problem of fuel subsidy is peculiar to this administration, but the truth is if President Buhari and his team will have to tell Nigerians the same stories we heard from former President Obasanjo, late Yar’Adua and Goodluck Jonathan, then the sacrifice made by Nigerians at the April polls to bring about the much trumpeted change can be said to be an exercise in futility.
The handling of the prevailing scarcity of petroleum products, especially the premium motor spirit (petrol) has shown that the change, which Nigerians had yearned for is not here yet. It is the same story altogether- The same excuses; the same treachery of the national assembly members; the same lies from fuel marketers and the same blame game from the petroleum resources handlers in the country.
What started like a child’s play appeared to have come to stay and the Presidency, like its predecessors looks helpless. What the federal government told us on November 17 when the scarcity became more serious was to be patient, while it assured the public that the fuel queues witnessed in petrol stations would disappear within the next 72 hours. 
Speaking during a monitoring exercise of fuel stations in Abuja, the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, also warned that, henceforth, any oil marketer caught hoarding the product, would be forced to dispense all the products in its tanks to motorists for free, while stiff sanctions would be meted out to the marketer subsequently.
Although the Department of Petroleum Resources has been able to carry out the minister’s order in few fuel stations, the fact remains that two weeks after Nigerians were told to be patient, most of the filling stations all over the country are still not dispensing fuel.
The unfortunate reality is that the ordinary Nigerians are the ones losing out in this kind of situation as fuel prices have gone up astronomically. Though, PMS is supposed to be sold at N87 per litre, the National Bureau of Statistics, in its October PMS price control watch, said that the product is still being sold at above N100 in many states in the country.
According to the agency, a litre of fuel in Bayelsa State N111; Abuja, N108.20; Cross River, N105.80; Kebbi, N100.24, Nassarawa, N102.50 and Taraba, N194.57. NBS put the average pump price of fuel across the country in October at N93.48 per litre.
For now, Nigerians have been told dozens of reasons why they have to waste their time searching for fuel. Apart from the argument that fuel marketers were being mischievous by engaging in outright hoarding, we are also told that the N413 billion approved by the Federal Government as payment for outstanding fuel subsidy which has not been approved by the National Assembly, is not helping matters. I was also made to understand that the stakeholders’ intervention is not yielding much success due to supply shortfall.
According to Chairman, Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, DAPPMA, Mr. Dapo Abiodun, daily consumption is about 35 million litres despite claims to the contrary, and NNPC alone cannot meet this demand because NNPC is a supplier of last resort and not a major supplier.
But if the warning of Abiodun is anything to go by, Nigerians need to brace for harder times because the politicisation of the approval of subsidy payment currently with the National assembly will make matters worse in December when demand naturally rises.
“We consume more fuel in December alone; we consume a minimum of 35 million litres because it is a holiday period and there is a lot of movement in and out of the country. So it is not a time to play politics or to experiment with numbers because marketers normally prepare for December period.”

Nigeria exports over two million barrels per day of crude oil, but relies almost entirely on imports for the 48 million litres per day of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) it consumes. Some of those imports come via a programme to swap crude for refined petroleum products, which are the subject of a government corruption investigation before it was totally cancelled by the present Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.
Subsidies were introduced in the Nigerian energy sector in the mid-1980s. Something of a creeping phenomenon, the value of the subsidies has gone from $1 billion in the 1980s to a prohibitive $6 billion. Available data show that the Federal Government spends about N1.4 trillion, about 30 per cent of its total yearly expenditure yearly on fuel subsidy.
Specifically, the government spent N4.5 trillion on fuel subsidy claims between 2006 and 2012, according to the audit reports of the Nigerian Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
A breakdown of the payments shows that while N816.5 billion was paid as subsidy claims between 2006 and 2008, the amount skyrocketed to N3 trillion between 2009 and 2011.

In 2012, N888 billion was allocated to subsidise petroleum product imports in the budget, but in December a supplementary budget of N161.6 billion for payment of arrears of fuel subsidy was submitted by the president and later approved by the National Assembly.
For 2014, the Federal Government again budgeted N971.1 billion for payments of subsidy, keeping it at the same level with that of 2013.

Curiously, the same set of Nigerians protesting the biting fuel scarcity are being used by politicians and fuel marketers to kick against removal of fuel subsidy. These people on the issue of subsidy are blackmailing the President and that is why its removal is not on the president’s agenda for now.
The question is, what do we have to show for all these expenses?