The fuel scarcity that enveloped the whole country in recent weeks may be subsiding, but the untold hardship it visited on Nigerians remain. Weekly Trust’s finding also show that the fuel crisis may be far from over unless the government makes clear its stand on deregulation.
Nasiru L. Abubakar
Madam Naomi (not real name) is a civil servant working in Nigeria’s capital city Abuja, but who lives in Karu in neighbouring Nasarawa State because she can not afford living inside the federal capital territory with her ‘meagre’ salary. To ease her transportation problems, she bought – in January this year – a car with money she raised through donation with her colleagues at the office.
“When I bought the car I was so happy that the days of struggling to join commercial vehicles are over. In fact, I got registered with a driving school even before the arrival of car because I never wanted anything to stand in my way having known my experience at the end of every working day,” Madam Naomi said.
However, Madam Naomi’s euphoria was cut short by the debilitating fuel scarcity crisis that enveloped the nation for several weeks. “Now I literally spend my after work hours at the filling station trying to buy fuel, sometimes without even buying the fuel after waiting for so long. Sometimes I feel like abandoning the car at home because I can’t afford the black market rate of N800 naira for a four-litre gallon (i.e. N200 per litre). What is stopping me is my experience of struggling at the bus stop. I hope the government will do something about this permanently,” she said.
In Minna, the Niger State capital, a 58-year old woman, Sarah gave up the ghost while queuing to buy fuel at the filling station. She was said to have queued for four hours inside her car at one station without getting fuel. She then left for another station and succeeded in getting the fuel, also after some hours. However, while trying to pay for the fuel, she slumped and died, probably due to exhaustion.
Who is to blame?
Though, some have attributed the fuel crisis to the Easter break, President Umaru Yar’adua blamed the scarcity on the face-off between the Lagos State government and petroleum tanker drivers some parts of the country on the face-off between the Lagos State government and tanker drivers.
The Petrol Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) recently halted the lifting of products from depots in Lagos, in protest over what they said was the harassment of their members by Lagos State Transport Management Authority (LASTMA). The case had however being settled and the drivers have since resumed loading from Lagos depot but the scarcity persists even the government claims that the country has enough supply of Premium Motor Spirit otherwise known as petrol to meet local demand.
Filling stations or black outlets?
Ever since the re-emergence of fuel scarcity, filling stations especially ones owned by independent petroleum marketers, have turned black market outfits, selling well above the government stipulated rate of N65 per litre.
Weekly Trust survey Kano-Kaduna road showed that all the filling stations with very few queues are selling well above the normal rate. At one of the filling stations called Kubewa situated at Chiromawa, a village about 45 kilometres to Kano, a litre was being sold at N130 naira (two times the normal rate) and people were buying.
Though most of the buyers were apparently black marketers because they were buying in jerry cans and even drums, the few car owners told Weekly Trust that they had no alternative because they are on a journey and need the fuel to reach their destinations on time.
The manager of Kubewa Petroleum, who refused to give his name, said they also were forced to sell at the rate they were selling because they got their supply at a very exorbitant rate. When asked how they were getting petroleum while other stations are without it, he said they usually get their supply from some major marketers.
DPR seems powerless
While Weekly Trust was still at the Kubewa filling station, an official of the Department for Petroleum Resources (DPR) came visiting. The official who said he was on a routine inspection forced the attendants to revert to the old normal price of N65 naira. All the pleas by the manager were ignored by the DPR official. DPR officials across the country are also going round shutting down filling stations selling fuel above N65.
But in spite of the DPR’s inspection to ensure that fuel is sold at the official rate and that the machines are not adjusted to short-change customers, other surveys by Weekly Trust in Lagos, Kaduna, Niger, Sokoto, Adamawa, Plateau, Abuja, Zaria show that many stations were selling above the stipulated rate of N65.
In Taraba State, as in other states of the North East where fuel sells above government stipulated price even when the commodity is not scarce, independent marketers have refused to comply with the federal government’s directive on the sell of the commodity at the approved pomp price of N65 per litre.
This is after the reopening of over twenty filling stations belonging to independent marketers in Jalingo which were sealed up by the Department of Petroleum Resources, DPR, for violating the federal government’s directive. In spite of the undertakings they individually signed to sell at the official rate as a precondition for reopening their filling stations, the major marketers in the state have continued to defy government’s order by selling above the pomp price.
Taraba State chairman of Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Ibrahim Liman, blamed the non compliance with the sale of petrol at official rates to alleged diversion of refined fuel from NNPC depots to private stations who sell to marketers at cut throat price.
Deregulation as culprit
When the government reduced the price of petroleum litre to N65 from N70 in January this year owing to the fact that landing cost of petroleum had fallen to N59, the scenario has now changed. Now that the government has withdrawn subsidy on petroleum products, the landing cost of PMS is about N70 per litre, said a petroleum marketer. “This means we cannot import (Nigeria now exports over 85% of its fuel for domestic consumption) and sell petrol at N65 per litre. That will be operating at a loss, which we can’t afford to.”
The marketer also said that by the time stocks they imported at N59 per litre is finished, fuel supply situation in the country is likely to worsen. He called on the government to rise to the occasion and go ahead with its plan to totally deregulate the oil sector.
“You see, we are still waiting for guidelines on deregulation before making any major commitments to new products importation. Without the government’s guidelines clearly being spelt out, we do not believe that we have deregulation in place and going ahead to import fuel may be suicidal.
The question on the minds of Nigerians is: when will Nigeria, as the sixth largest producer of crude oil in the world, see the end of fuel scarcity in the country? This is one question only the government – and perhaps, marketers of petroleum products in the country – can tell.
