…Nigeria buy fuel at N250 per litre
Olusola Bello
There is no doubt that Nigerians are going through hard times because they currently lack some of the basic things that could make life better for them.
There is no fuel, no electricity. These essential resources are lacking all over the country because of bad leadership and it does not seem as if there is going to be an end to this situation very soon.
Because of lack of fuel, many Nigerians were resuming at the filling stations wasting productive hours in attempts to get fuel to run their generators. They are currently paying direly to get the fuel no matter how small. Many of the filling stations especially those independent fillings that are not controlled by and corporate organization fix arbitrary prices and also sell at odd times.
If you go to filling stations with five litres to10 litres jerican you are forced to pay N200, this is not part of the money you pay for fuel. It is after this that you have to payN200 per litre. This does not stop them from taking their usual N100 that they collect when there is no scarcity on jerican. These are some of the premium Nigerian pay.
Going by this situation, one wonders why some are kicking against removal of fuel subsidy. The poor that they claimed they are fighting for are the ones oppressing themselves. Some of these called poor buy fuel and horde it in anticipation that the government would increase the price. You need to see how vicious those petrol attendants behave when they want to collect the N200
Nigerians cluster around the dispensing pumps at the filling stations without minding the danger involved.
Street urchins called area boys, touts are also having nice times as they take charge at filling stations and determine who gets what. They have special arrangements with petrol attendants who pretend not to see what the touts are doing. The touts fill their jerricans with ease at the expense of other people because the proceeds from petrol are shared by both the attendants and the touts.
In some filling stations, despite that they have fuel, they refused to sell in the daytime. It is sold under the cover of the night simply because they want to make unusual gains.
Many of these touts are on the streets now selling fuel at different prices. Ten (10) litre goes for as much as N3000. This amount if there is no fuel scarcity give you almost 18 litres of petrol
Successful governments have had challenges of fuel scarcity, yet their approach to revamping the refineries has been lackadaisical.
President Muhammadu Buhari when he was campaigning to become president stated that he would fix the refineries and that the fuel subsidy regime was a scam. But now seven years into his presidency, Nigerians are still faced with harrowing and painful experience of fuel scarcity, the magnitude that has not been seen in over one and half decades.
Rather than solving the problems of refineries, he went through the shortcut, that is, the Direct Sales and Direct Purchase (DSDP)programme which has now brought hardship to the Nigerian citizens. The process of selecting the contractors is allegedly said to be opaque.
Some of the contractors that are involved in the programme brought in methanol-laden fuel which has resulted in the current fuel scarcity. The country decided to reject the product as a result of the danger it can cause car engines. In spite of this rejection, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is desperately trying to make up for the gap that has been created,but it seems the more product is pushed out from the depots the more the queues get longer in Lagos and Abuja and in some cities you can not find traces of fuel anywhere.
Not a few of the downstream of the petroleum industry operators have expressed their disgust and embarrassment over the persistent queues being witnessed currently in Lagos and other parts of the country.
According to them, the situation is not as serious as members of the public are making it look, as supplies are coming and companies are loading, but it may not be as it was before the unfortunate incident of the adulterated fuel.
An industry source said that two vessels containing 120,000 metric tons of fuel arrived Lagos port Tuesday, last week. He also said by this week there would be several vessels that would be arriving in the country to discharge of some of their contents in various jetties in Lagos and in other parts of the country.
He said even before now, marketers have been loading from various depots in order to meet demands.
Those who should know and are kept abreast of the developments daily in the industry of what is being done to salvage the current situation said that people who ordinarily have not been filling their tanks before or those who feel they need to fill their jeri cans and keep it for their generators because they don’t know how long the scarcity would last are the ones that are responsible for queues.
According to them, there is no doubt that marketers are not getting the desired quantity of the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) from the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company (PPMC), a subsidiary of Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, but what is coming, however, should keep the country wet enough to avoid the kind of queues currently being witnessed.
Some of the filling stations operators are hoarding PMS thinking that the price would be increased. They are also profiteering from the situation as many of them have resulted in selling the product in the night at a premium.
Top industry operators however tried to explain the scenario in which the country is currently in. They stated: “It is like people do not understand the magnitude of the problem. All the products that were to be received for about 5 to 6 days were not available, because a whole week delivery is contaminated. The first reaction from the public is panic buying because they would be imagining what is happening.”
“This consequently leads to the assessment of the situation, and having done the assessment, you then discover that the bad product has taken over half of the tankage available for storage.”
“if you want to put products in tanks, you can only fill half of the tanks because the other half is occupied by contaminated product. This means even if we have fuel available there are no storage facilities to take them.”
They said this situation which looks as if there is shortage in supply is further compounded by the people who usually buy N1000 or N500 fuel before but now jump into every filling station along their ways to top their tanks even if there is was no need to do so.
Not only that, the attitude by members of the public helps deplete what is available in the storage facilities of oil marketing companies. It also means that every fuel that is brought into the country, instead of it lasting for seven days in the tank would be depleted within two days.
Another industry source said if there was fuel enough to go round there would not be queues and panic buying.
According to him, under normal circumstances, major oil marketers get three vessels to service their customers but last week there was only one vessel and this week also there has just been one. Meaning that instead of six vessels that the marketers would normally have in two weeks they received just two in two weeks.
He said the companies are getting products but there is a supply gap.
Another source said the technical and commercial committees set up are working very hard to ensure things work out well by turning their reports to the steering committee.
He said the committees are trying to ensure that the PPMC floods the market with products so that the adulterated one can be blended in an acceptable manner and also have enough of the good fuel made available to the public.