A little over a year ago, January 2015 to be precise, this newspaper reported that petroleum products marketers and their agents in the country might have been swindling Nigerian kerosene consumers to the tune of N800 million on daily basis. That report merely supported countless bribery and corruption scams trailing kerosene and other petroleum products’ supply in the country in recent years. Kerosene is a petroleum product of premium value to Nigeria’s poorest of the poor, the down-trodden and low income groups. It is their major source of energy for cooking, especially.
But never in the country’s recent history had its price been bearable for the aforementioned groups, despite the generous subsidy the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) hitherto paid purportedly to crash the pump price for consumers. Official information indicated, for instance, that national daily requirement of kerosene as at January 2015 stood at eight million litres, while the official supply price to the market was N50 per litre. But consumers paid between N130 and N200 per litre, depending on their locations. A market survey this newspaper conducted in Lagos and its environs also showed that major marketers did not have the product in their retail outlets. The Executive Secretary of Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN), Mr. Thomas Olawore, was quoted as saying that major marketers did not sell the product because they did not have allocation from the NNPC. Another national newspaper published a similar report earlier in February 2014, alleging that oil marketers paid over N195.5 billion in bribes to officials of the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the NNPC before getting allocations/ approval to lift kerosene between 2010 and 2012.
The report said the NNPC charged marketers a bribe of N25 per litre as ‘mobilisation fee’; and the racket explained why it was impossible to sell kerosene to end users at any price below N170 per litre. An analysis of figures obtained from the official website of the NNPC showing the Pipelines and Product Marketing Company’s (PPMC) kerosene sales revealed that 2.996 billion litres were sold in 2010; 2.869 billion in 2011, and 3.123 billion in 2012, at which time NNPC imported the product at N156.46K per litre and sold to marketers at N40.90K per litre. It was then reasoned that with a total of 8.988 billion litres of kerosene sold in those three years, about 7.819 billion litres must have been lifted by oil marketers, who had to pay a N25 bribe for every litre of kerosene they lifted between 2010 and 2012, based on the fact that marketers controlled about 87 percent of retail outlets in the country, while the NNPC retained 13 percent, with 37 mega stations, 12 floating mega stations and a little over 500 affiliate stations at the time.
If marketers lifted about 7.819 billion litres of kerosene, but paid N25 bribe on each litre so as to be able to lift at N40.90 per litre from NNPC, the amount that must have been paid to corrupt petroleum ministry and NNPC officials would amount to N195.5 billion for the three years – 2010, 2011 and 2012. But NNPC’s acting Group General Manager, Public Affairs, at the time, Dr. Omar Farouk Ibrahim, in response, dismissed the bribe claim as a blanket accusation against the oil behemoth, demanding instead, information on where the bribe thrived in the corporation’s 22 depots in the country and the officials involved? Ibrahim, however, admitted that the NNPC actually sold kerosene to marketers at the subsidized rate of N40.90k per litre; and wondered why they (marketers) were selling at between N120 and N130 per litre to Nigerians. Curiously, nonetheless, no known marketer, to public knowledge, was molested or prosecuted for infracting official kerosene pump price. It is, therefore, commendable that the Federal Government, at last, officially terminated the payment of subsidy on kerosene late last month. Instead of N50 per litre, the regulated pump price that never was, the product will now sell for N83, according to the PPPRA’s latest pricing template. This, hopefully, may rest the frauds and controversies trailing kerosene subsidy that ended up subsiding smart crooks in the oil industry and their private sector allies, instead of ordinary Nigerians. That the formal removal of the subsidy is least felt by common people appears the strongest confirmation as yet of the inherent fraud it had been. The FG should now seek better, honest and workable ways of truly assisting the weak, poor and vulnerable in the country to enable them survive the prevailing, grinding economic and living conditions.
