Another Crushing Fuel Scarcity, What’s Going On Here?

THEFRONTLINES BY JOSEPH USHIGIALE

For most Nigerians, this is perhaps the worst time anyone would want to be a Nigerian living in Nigeria. Before 2015, most Nigerians thought the conditions of living were appalling and deplorable. This is why the then All Progressive Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari’s declaration to run for president on the promise of change received a groundswell of public support.

To this group, Buhari’s change mantra was needed to clean the Augean stable and put Nigeria back on the world map. After emerging victorious at the polls, a triumphant Buhari in his inaugural address assured Nigerians he would tackle problems besetting the country head-on.

Hear him: “At home, we face enormous challenges. Insecurity, pervasive corruption, the hitherto unending and seemingly impossible fuel, and power shortages are the immediate concerns. We are going to tackle them head-on. Nigerians will not regret that they have entrusted national responsibility to us. We must not succumb to hopelessness and defeatism. We can fix our problems.”

About seven years down his tenure, Nigeria is in retrogression with the President blaming his predecessor for the woes he promised to bring solutions to. In the seven years since he took over, the Buhari government has not improved electricity generation from the 3000/4000 MW it inherited from former President Goodluck Jonathan.

While Minister of Power, Babatunde Fashola keeps reeling off figures detailing thousands of megawatts generated by the administration, none of these megawatts has impacted in improving electricity supply or is being felt by the people. Indeed, apart from not adding value, it has been reported that power generation has dropped from 3000MW to less than 2000MW nationwide.

As if the pains inflicted by incessant power outages were not enough, it was a bewildered nation that woke up last week to witness the resurgence of fuel queues in Abuja, Lagos, and all the major cities pan-Nigeria. Now, apart from the lack of a constant power supply, Nigerians were now faced with two major hurdles including fuel scarcity.
So the question now is: what went wrong? According to the Group Managing Director
of the Nigerian National Company Limited (NNPC), Mele Kyari, the company’s investigation has revealed the presence of Methanol in four petrol cargoes imported by MRS, Emadeb/Hyde/AY Maikifi/Brittania-U Consortium, Oando, and Duke Oil.
Furthermore, he said the NNPC quality inspectors including GMO, SGS, GeoChem, and G&G conducted tests before discharge, which showed that the cargo also met the country’s standard.

“As a standard practice for all PMS import to Nigeria, the cargoes were equally certified by inspection agent appointed by the Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has met Nigerian specification.
“It is important to note that the usual quality inspection protocol employed in both the load port in Belgium and our discharge ports in Nigeria do not include the test for per cent of methanol content and therefore the additive was not detected by our quality inspectors,” he said.

Less than 24 hours after Kyari’s announcement, MRS issued its own rebuttal arguing that NNPC’s statement was misleading to the general public because according to the company “Due to current subsidy regime, NNPC is the sole supplier of all PMS in Nigeria. Consequently, the NNPC through their trading arm Duke Oil, supplied a cargo of PMS purchased from international trader Litasco and delivered it with Motor Tanker (MT) Nord Gainer. This vessel discharged in Apapa between the 24th and 30th of January, 2022,” it had alleged.
This rebuttal was to be followed by yet another of the companies alleged to be behind the adulterated fuel importation into the country.
A statement released by the lead partner, Emadeb Energy Services explained that the importation of the contaminated PMS was executed by a “member of the consortium, to wit: Brittania-U.

“Therefore, the blanket claims made against the consortium by the NNPC are misleading and contradict the actual events that happened; they do not fully reflect and/or represent what transpired.
“It is important to inform the public of these facts and provide clarifications relating to the delivery of the said contaminated PMS to the country.
“We also deem it necessary to protect our image as we have invested a lot in building our respective brands in the industry.
“At the formation of the Consortium in May 2021 by NNPC, Brittania-U refused to execute the Service and Consortium Agreement submitted to NNPC in fulfillment of the award of the DSDP Contract.

“Emadeb, as the lead of the Consortium, engaged Brittania-U severally and they insisted on dealing with NNPC independently.
“NNPC was expressly notified about this by the other Consortium members via a letter dated June 2, 2021,” it clarified.
It would appear that someone somewhere is hiding some vital information and shielding himself from a reprimand and that person is Kyari. For instance, since petroleum product importers started having problems sourcing for foreign exchange who else other than the NNPC has been importing petroleum products?

If NNPC handles nearly all the imports through crude-for-fuel contracts, known as Direct Sale, Direct Purchase (DSDP), with consortia of local and foreign oil firms, who else other than himself and the company should take full responsibility for this monumental failing?
If Kyari is arguing that petrol brought into Nigeria usually does not include the test for the level of methanol content and that cargoes’ quality certificates issued at the loading port in Belgium, by AmSpec Belgium, indicated that the product complied with Nigerian specifications, what steps were put in place to guide against the possibility of a supplier cutting corners?
If officials at the NNPC are not benefiting or gaming the system, why lower the standard to off-spec and also exempt the products from being checked for methanol and ethanol? Why did Nigeria not simply adopt global petroleum products standards but chose to cherry-pick as if we exist on another planet altogether?

Although the federal government has instituted an inquiry to unravel those behind the scam with assurances that affected motorists whose vehicles have been affected to be compensated, the outcome of such an investigation is obvious.
Minister of State for Petroleum, Timi Sylva told the media after the federal executive meeting last week that “There will be a major investigation to unravel everything and then let us really get to the bottom of it before we can come back and tell you what is going to happen to the culprits.
“We know that some people’s vehicles must have also been damaged, that is also going to be taken into consideration in dealing with the situation,” he stated.

While we await the outcome of the inquiry, it is important to note that there is actually no better way to describe what is going on in Nigeria other than say that the President has completely abdicated his responsibility as Minister for Petroleum.
Since independence in 1960, Buhari would be the first President to double as Commander in Chief as well as substantive Minister of Petroleum. We must keep in mind that Buhari was the federal minister of Petroleum resources under the General Olusegun Obasanjo regime and under Buhari’s watch, a whopping N2.4b developed wings and flew away. Obasanjo gave him a clean bill of health then.

So when he again assumed that responsibility, it was assumed that perhaps a leopard has finally changed its skin. Regrettably, under his watch, Nigeria has never recorded the kind of mind-boggling looting of the national treasury like it is currently ongoing today, especially in the oil and gas sector. In the last seven years, as a minister, Buhari has not revamped a single refinery, neither built a new one nor stopped the importation of petroleum products which he promised to during his campaigns.
Even the subsidy that he swore did not exist and led a protest of activists against Jonathan’s government describing it as a scam has endured and is even being operated in a more opaque and questionable manner. Yet, the President still holds the Petroleum ministry portfolio where he has no clue what goes on there.

From what has happened so far, if the President was alive to his duties as Minister of Petroleum how was he not aware of a Guardian publication which clearly stated that the fuel consumed in Nigeria was sourced from local refineries in the Niger Delta and dirty fuel with very low quality from Europe?

The report described locally refined crude oil in the creeks as having better quality in comparison to the toxic fuel imported by international oil dealers that pollute the environment and leave negative health impacts across the country. The current adulterated fuel is a classic example with a corollary that the international oil dealers and NNPC officials undercut Nigeria by $400 per tonne each time they supply such cheap and off-spec toxic fuel.

According to the Guardian of London, “Shell, Exxon, Chevron, and other major oil companies extract and export up to 2m barrels a day of high quality, low sulfur “Bonny Light” crude from the Niger delta. But very little of this oil is refined in the country because its four state-owned refineries are dysfunctional or have closed.

Instead, international dealers export to Nigeria around 900,000 tonnes a year of low-grade, “dirty” fuel, made in Dutch, Belgian, and other European refineries, and hundreds of small-scale artisanal refineries produce large quantities of illegal fuel from oil stolen from the network of oil pipelines that criss-cross the Niger delta.”

It went on to explain the consequences of our officials looking the other way while refusing to standardize petroleum products importation and exempting them from inspection stating that the “net result, is that Nigeria has some of the worst air pollutions in the world, with dense clouds of choking soot hanging over gridlocked cities leading to a rise in serious health conditions as well as damaged vehicles.”
Drawing insight from an international resource watchdog group Stakeholder Democracy Network (SDN) new report, the paper highlighted that “The extreme toxicity of the “official” fuel exported from Europe surprised researchers who took samples of diesel sold in government-licensed filling stations in Port Harcourt and Lagos. They found that on average the fuel exceeded EU pollution limits by as much as 204 times, and by 43 times the level for gasoline.”
While Kyari would exempt petroleum products import from inspection for obvious reasons, independent analysis carried out by this watchdog group said

“Laboratory analysis also showed that the black market fuel was highly polluting but of a higher quality than the imported diesel and gasoline. The average “unofficial” diesel tested exceeded the level of EU sulfur standards 152 times, and 40 times the level for gasoline.
“Our research suggests that Nigeria is having dirty fuel dumped on it that cannot be sold to other countries with higher and better-implemented standards. The situation is so bad that the average types of diesel sampled are of an even lower quality than that produced by artisanal refining camps in the creeks of the Niger delta,” said Florence Kayemba, SDN programme manager.

Releasing chilling statistics to capture the danger that lies ahead as NNPC officials profit at the expense of Nigeria, the report pointed out that “With more than 11m, mostly old, cars imported from Europe and Japan on the roads, and hundreds of thousands of inefficient generators used by households and businesses for electricity, Nigeria ranks fourth in the world for deaths caused by air pollution. It has been estimated that 114,000 people die prematurely from air pollution each year.”

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Therefore it is imperative for the President and his NNPC team not to look any further for culprits but to regard themselves as complicit in this adulterated fuel import. to save face, the government has to quickly review and ensure that any petroleum products imported into Nigeria must follow global standards as well as be subjected to full-scale inspection to meet global specifications.
This is the only way we can save Nigerians from the dangers of toxic petroleum products as well plug the conduits through which our commonwealth is being fleeced.