Over the years, Nigeria has been battling with inadequate data. The prevailing development in the oil and gas sector, especially on the consumption pattern of Premium Motor Spirit shows that the country has more work to do in the area of planning and in the terms of trust, transparency and accountability. KINGSLEY JEREMIAH writes.
“I remember that last year we spoke about this. Unfortunately, this year, we are talking about subsidies again. The over N11 trillion we are going to take as debt, more than half of it is going for subsidy. The issue is not about the smuggling of petroleum products. I have always argued this with NNPC.
In the few months that Nigeria tried deregulating the petroleum market, daily consumption of PMS went down drastically to about 45 million barrels per litre. In the month of June last year, a few months after subsidy returned, Group Managing Director , NNPC, Mele Kyari said smuggling across the borders increased the daily consumption to over 103 million litres per day in the previous month.
“NNPC Ltd recognises the impact of maritime and cross border smuggling of PMS on the overall supply framework. NNPC also acknowledges the possibilities of other criminal activities in the PMS supply and distribution value chain. As a responsible business entity, NNPC will continue to engage and work with relevant agencies of the Government to curtail smuggling of PMS and contain any other criminal activities,” Kyari had stated.
“So, later on, once the exchange rate also moved up a little bit and swallowed the gains we made from the N162 move, the figures increased again. It is important to note that Nigeria does not only subsidise products for its citizens. It does for other neighbouring West African countries. Admitting to the stability in the market since the sector was deregulated, stakeholders believe that addressing foreign exchange challenges would enable the marketers to import products instead of allowing the national oil company to play the dominant role of importation of petroleum products.His main solution, however, is for the government to adopt a solution developed by his association to monitor products from depot to destination.