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Nigerialeaks:
Fuel Subsidy Fraud
By Dr Olayiwola
Ajileye Newsdiaryonline Fri Jan 6,2012
Fuel station
Nigeria is a nation blessed with abundant
natural resources, the major one being about 35.5 billion
barrels of Oil with potential for more deep offshore production
and 180 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves according to the
United State Energy Information Administration (EIA). This makes
Nigeria the 10th petroleum rich nation according to OPEC and the
most affluent in Africa. Since the late 1950s when Oil was
discovered at Oloibiri, Niger Delta Region, Nigeria has
extracted over $1.6 Trillion of oil revenue.
Nigeria official daily crude oil production
post-amnesty is 2.6 million barrels per day (excluding the
stolen crude production by official and unofficial bunkerers and
private Oil well owners). Our daily local consumption is
estimated to be 300, 000 barrels per day. This leaves
approximately 2.3 Million bb/d for export to international
market to generate up to 85% of our national revenue and 95% of
Foreign exchange earnings. This generated revenue is a
collective patrimony and sovereign wealth with politicians and
policy makers as custodian of commonwealth trusted to be
invested in social and developmental infrastructure for the
benefit of every citizen of Nigeria and to meet our
International obligations. Things like Road network, Hospitals
and Health facilities, Education, Housing, Security of lives and
Properties and Environment, job creations and Industries and
social security support for the vulnerable citizens, these are
hallmarks of a stable and responsible society.
If Nigeria produces 2.6Million bpd of Crude
and local consumption is 0.3Million bpd, what is the need for
subsidy? Why is the need to import refined fuel? How can you
subsidise what is already in surplus production from the natural
reserve? Can a Yam Farmer with large hectares of land who
produces large tonnes of tuber per year for export, turn around
to say he lacks pounded yam and he can only eat pounded yam if
he ask his friend/competitor a tuber of yam and then pays his
friend’s wife to pound it for his consumption? It betrays all
sensible economic logic.
Nigeria has 4 fully functional refineries
as at 1988 built by the Military regimes with a total capacity
of 450,000 barrels per day production. Bearing in mind that our
daily local consumption is estimated at 300,000 bpd. If the
refineries were to be fully or 70-80% functional, there should
be no problem with fuel availability or pricing in Nigeria. We
would have no business of creating a false fuel importation
economy let alone fuel subsidy. Even, if we for some weird
reasons decide to import refined fuel, it would be from the
produced crude and there should not be any reason for subsidy
because of the capacity to negotiate competitive process of
production from the height of our surplus crude. This has been
done successfully before in Nigeria during the Military regime
of Buhari.
The concept of fuel subsidy is another word
for “capital cronyism” which allows private individuals to own
Oil wells belonging to Nigerians, either as a front or in trust
or in corrupt collusion with people in government with vast
capacity and vessels to transport it out of the country and then
refine it at some privately owned refineries cited in another
countries or by other arrangements with refineries own and built
by other sovereign nation in which they have vested interest and
later secure import contracts to bring it in to sell at
exorbitant unregulated prices at the pumps to innocent Nigerian
citizens. The Oil Sheikhs and Oligarchs now receive substantial
billions of naira in return from a colluding government which
they now put to Nigerians as Fuel Subsidy! We now know that
those companies and Individuals are no more faceless either by
design or default, some of them have recently been named, but
their backers in government remain faceless. The personalities
behind these so called Fuel subsidy sham are not unfamiliar to
Nigerians and indeed the world. Majority of those Sheikh exist
in a cabal of government collaborators and have dine and wined
publicly with different sponsors in successive government in
Nigeria till date. They have been celebrated and awarded
national honours, GCON, CFR, CON, OFR etc. Little wonder then
why the current government of Goodluck Jonathan is claiming to
be subsidizing them and their companies with about N1.3 Trillion
per year, being payment for services rendered for and on behalf
of themselves and sponsors in government. Removal or no removal,
these cabals still retain the import licence and infrastructure
to continue to import refined fuels and transport crude anyway,
so the current price that the government just announce would
further increase the income give to these cabals and it will
also promote artificial scarcity and hoarding of imported fuel
as these people also own the storage facilities for the imported
fuel. The constituted government agency NNPC is effectively
inert. So, the argument for Subsidy removal is warped, watery,
unfounded and curiously suspicious. Recently, it will refresh
your memories when a General publicly admitted that he made a
profit of $500 million when he sold off an Oil well gifted to
him for $1 Billion and he admittedly was ran out of ideas on
what to do with the windfall in one deal!
The aforementioned is typical of why
Nigeria found herself in the current debacle of so called fuel
subsidy. The bottom line is that there is nothing like Fuel
Subsidy and there is infact no subsidy on anything in Nigeria,
let alone fuel! The fuel claiming to be highly subsidised is the
fuel taken out of the country by the Oil Cabals to be refined
and imported back to be sold at the pump to Nigerians. The
Cabals and cronies have also contributed remotely or directly to
sabotaging the refineries in Nigeria to sustain their import
business with dividends for their sponsors in government. It is
a false economy, it is capital fraud, and it is a monumental
corruption of mega proportion! It is sustained by official
institutional corruption, bad governance and inept leadership
till date since 1985!
The current government of Goodluck Jonathan
who has now announce removal of a non-existent subsidy to
deceive the citizens is only interested in lining the pockets of
his cronies and do the biddings shamelessly, of organisations
such as IMF/World Bank to weave a cloak of poverty and hardship
on the common man. They have arbitrarily and illegally increase
the pump price of what we naturally have in surplus without
recourse to the existing statutory constitutional and
legislative framework. The accruing funds, like every other
funds will flight out of Nigeria unaccounted to private accounts
all over the world and go towards building estates and personal
empire for them and their families in other sovereign countries
like Dubai, USA, London, South Africa, Ghana and also will serve
to settle down payments for privately own 5 star Hotels, Beach
Resorts, in the Caribbean and choice places in Nigeria and
abroad.
The current Government announced a Subsidy
Fund Investment Committee and other patronising lousy measures
like importation of 1600 buses for Nigerians to use to ease the
pain of the so called subsidy removal. Why? Will the buses run
on urine or rain water? Who got the contract to import those
buses and at what unit price? Again, that information is
shrouded in official secrecy like every other thing, in a
democratically selected government. How much will it cost to
revamp our refineries to full functional capacity or even to
70-80% capacity? The government is not concern with that idea
because it runs parallel to their agenda of sucking the nation
dry with funds they will never need. Dead funds that does not
create opportunities for educated young Nigerians or add value
to the national economy. No power, no roads, Universities
blacklisted and on strikes, no security of lives and properties,
collapsing infrastructure and housing, the list is endless.
Just as they did to refineries leading to
the business of fuel importation by these Sheikhs and Oligarch,
the same was done systematically with our Universities,
Industries and Railways. The University situation is
disheartening because they rob it on the faces of hardworking
families from low-middle income backgrounds. These Oligarchs and
sponsors in government sends their children to Universities
and private schools
abroad paying expensive fees and living cost at the expense on
Nigerians and then import their products (Children)
back to Nigeria to
continue where they left it occupying directorship positions of
companies they have looted to create. The glaring bottom line is
that the poor subsidise the rich in Nigeria and that is why the
saying that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is very
close to the gospel truth.
Goodluck Jonathan you have been found out!
Before you seek to remove any imaginary subsidy, you
should seek to remove poverty and corruption in Nigeria, and
then Nigerians can see the love you have for them, not by
cascading a policy that would take living costs and standards
beyond the reach of the majority of the citizens. This is the
NIGERIALEAK, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FUEL SUBSIDY, IT IS ONLY
AN ECONOMIC AND FRAUD MIRAGE!
Dr Olayiwola Ajileye
Publicity and Media Executive, Champions
for Nigeria Organisation
drajileye@hotmail.com
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