Nigerians have in the last two weeks been thrown into chaos amid scarcity of fuel in petroleum outlets across the country. Last week, The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority said it found gasoline with methanol above national specifications in the supply chain and removed the fuel from circulation.
Reuters later reported that NNPC had asked trading firms for emergency supplies of about 500,000 tonnes of gasoline.
Before now, Nigerians have heard about ‘dirty’, ‘foul’ and contaminated fuel. During the regime of Sani Abacha, circa 1997/98, the nation witnessed the supply of such adulterated fuel. In 2008, during the administration of Umaru Yar’adua, there was also a major concern with dirty fuel.
Today, Nigerians continue to suffer scarcity of petroleum products as a result of the supply of off-spec fuel.
The concerns, therefore, raise questions about Nigeria’s import-dependent status despite its oil resources and its weak regulatory environment. It also speaks to the challenges associated with the nation’s refining capacity.
Import-dependent; regulatory deficiency
Although Nigeria is a major producer of crude oil and gas, it depends heavily on imported petroleum products that are refined in foreign nations for local consumption.
In the first half of 2021, for instance, the amount spent on the importation of petrol jumped to N1.47 trillion, over 73 per cent of what was incurred in the whole of 2020 and 86 per cent of what the country spent on petrol imports in the whole of 2019.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed that petrol topped the list of products imported into the country in the second quarter of 2021, accounting for 11.26 per cent of the total amount spent on imported products, which was up from 10.04 per cent in the previous quarter.
According to online platform Nairametrics, between January and March 2021, the import of petrol into Nigeria amounted to 688 trillion Naira.
Last October, a report on the values of petroleum exports and imports of member nations of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) put the amount spent on the importation of petroleum products into Nigeria in 2020 at $43.46 billion.
To put it in context, the amount was higher than the revenue the country earned from the export of petroleum products throughout the same year.
OPEC said in the report that Nigeria’s imports of petroleum products consistently exceeded the nation’s exports for five years.
The near-total dependence on import, to be sure, is majorly due to Nigeria’s moribund refineries that have remained dormant for several years, despite repeated turn around maintenance which were done by successive governments.
In its monthly report for August 2021, the latest of such reports, the NNPC said the refineries received and processed zero crude in the whole year prior because the refineries are being rehabilitated.
For a country with such dysfunctional system which relies on import, one would think that the regulatory framework put in place would be excellent and test for all chemical additive in the imported fuel.
But last week, in the midst of the melee, the NNPC admitted that it didn’t test for methanol, adding that the additive content of the substandard fuel in circulation was 20%. In contrast, the global average for methanol content is between 2% and 3%!
In effect, the additive was not detected because the regulators, acting on trust, assumed that the petrol contained the specified percentage of methanol. The irony of the whole messy situation isn’t that the nation has been thrown into chaos and businesses have been disrupted; but that the NNPC, in its import control mechanism, acted on the trust that it has not even earned back home among Nigerians. Weird.
‘Third False’?
Still talking about trust, it would appear that Nigeria’s much-taunted “third force” advocates may need to learn a few things from the much-demonised bigger parties (APC and PDP).
Since 2021, the expected launch of a ‘New Third Force’ has been in the news with endless promises. Aside the chaos in what constitutes the “third force”, it’s interesting that the ‘movement’ hasn’t even been birthed neither has it commenced grassroots mobilization.
Nigeria has 774 local government areas (LGAs), with each LGA further subdivided into a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 Wards. In all of these places, the two bigger parties have representatives and followers.
In 2019, the third force couldn’t pull any significant crowd because it failed to understand these dynamics. Again, in February 2022, there isn’t any coherence beyond promises.
Beyond sloganeering, Nigeria’s third force may not have learnt any real lesson in politicking. While it continues to drag its feet, the PDP has successfully held its convention and leading aspirants in the APC are moving across villages all over Nigeria.
The position the ‘Third Force’ advocates have chosen to take ahead of the 2023 election is the equivalence of “off-side” in football. In the end, the possible redemption promised by a third force could turn out to be yet the “third false”.
Trusting Tinubu’s pee
Still on trust deficit, another major event this week showed that the absence of trust permeates other aspects of the Nigerian life, from oil through to politics and media, content delivery and perception management.
Earlier in the week, a video went viral on social media showing the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress and former Lagos State governor, Bola Tinubu, with suspected pee stains on his cloth during a visit to the Palace of the Awujale of Ijebuland.
In the video, Tinubu, who was seated on a black leather couch, rose to give a speech but his attire appeared soaked from behind, particularly at the butt area.
An aide of the politician was seen holding his nose while looking at the wet area. Expectedly, this piqued the interest of many Nigerians who insisted the wetness of the attire at the spot was urine. Others have however argued that it might be sweat resulting from the long period of sitting on a leather couch.
It’s still a matter of trust deficit that there isn’t clarity around what happened at the scene of the incident till date. But there is a sense in which the paranoia of Nigerians over the issue is understandable. Some data may throw more insight.
As of May 2018, President Buhari had spent 172 days of his 1096 days in office seeking medical attention outside the country. The record, even at the time, surpassed that of the late former president, Umaru Musa Yar’adua.
Last August, data crunched by an online outfit showed that President Buhari has spent 200 days in London on official medical trips. By implication, for every ten days Mr Buhari has been in office as Nigeria’s president, he has spent one day in London for health treatment!
Tinubu, too, has a record of seeking medical attention outside the country, and Nigerians were genuinely worried that a frontline presidential candidate already shows signs that the more things may change, the more they are likely to remain the same.
The furore over Tinubu’s pee, therefore, raises yet another matter of trust deficit. Like Buhari, who hides his medical records from his employers (Nigerians), Nigerians don’t trust Tinubu.
But as event of the last few days have shown, if examined in the context of framing and media-enabled mis-information, do Nigerians even trust the media too?