Why should Nigerians be paying more for Dangote petrol than for imported petrol?

By Rotimi Fasan – THE hard times Nigerians are passing through are not about to end; it’s getting clearer by the day. The more things change, the more they remain the same. That may sound, these days, like a cliche where Nigerians are concerned. But it says so much about the situation we’ve found ourselves in.

For several years and, especially in the last few months of the excruciating energy crisis, Nigerians had eagerly looked forward to when the $20 billion Aliko Dangote refinery would begin production. It was seen as the be-all cure for all the troubles of the oil sector.

But as the day and time drew near for the take-off of the refinery, so did the company encounter unanticipated issues from the least expected quarters. State agents in the form of officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, now a limited liability company, were the first to raise arms against Dangote.

In a country like Nigeria where ethnic affiliation counts for much, it didn’t matter that Aliko Dangote, the man behind the Dangote conglomerate, including the refinery that has become its major business, is a Northerner as the CEO of the NNPCL.

The officials railed against the products of the refinery which they wrote off as being of inferior quality to what is available in the international market. It would soon be known to the world that no test was conducted to know the quality of products from the Dangote Refinery.

The goal of the NNPCL was and still is to demarket the refinery and whatever it may be producing. Yes, the NNPCL is now a commercial enterprise, we are told. It is different from the regulatory agency but that difference is only in name.

Otherwise, they were cut from the same cloth and share a similar work ethic that is steeped both in corruption and inefficiency. For days after the adverse pronouncement from the NMDPRA, which is the regulatory agency, Aliko Dangote ran from pillar to post trying to correct the negative impression created about the quality of the products from his refinery.

Even if he was neither the most altruistic Nigerian business man nor were he their favourite, Nigerians stood firmly behind him. Opinions were divided about the source of his woes but there must be many out there, conspiracy theorists no less, who believed that President Bola Tinubu had a hand in it.

And we may never really know where the truth lies but it’s a fact that it took the intervention of the president to resolve the tricky issue of what currency the Dangote Refinery is to pay for the crude it refines.

About two weeks ago, the Dangote group finally introduced its petrol to Nigerians. The company promoted it as being of premium quality, one of the best, if not the very best in the market. The NNPCL has not been able to disprove that claim. But no sooner was the claim made than the Dangote Refinery got into another round of bickering about who could buy its refined crude and at what price.

The usual enemies, always shadow boxing in the dark, again showed their hand by their apparent lack of interest in anything concerning the Dangote Refinery. Sabotage was written all over their action and the Refinery, now confident in itself, promised to export its petrol if local marketers or even the NNPCL showed no interest in it.

You wonder why there should be so much hostility to the emergence of a refinery that was for so long seen as the one that would finally wipe off our shame as an oil producing country whose oil sector has been mortgaged to local and international rent seekers.

A country plagued by an interminable energy crisis that is at the root of and has worsened the parlous condition of an economy left prostrate by inflation – it’s strange that a lot of energy is being spent to ensure the failure of a potential remedy for the crisis in the land. And everyone, including the government, looks helpless! Is this how formidable the forces of retrogression are?

From where do we begin the rescue now we are being told that the NNPCL will be the sole buyer of Dangote petrol that it will resell to Nigerians at a price higher than imported dealers sell theirs? Why should Nigerians be saddled with a semi state-owned organisation, a so-called limited liability company that has crippled the country’s oil sector and become a financial drain on the treasury?

With about four refineries that have not refined a drop of oil in about four decades, why must the NNPCL be the middleman between Nigerians and the Dangote Refinery? Why must anything intended to ameliorate the pains of Nigerians constantly be in abeyance? First, it was the NNPCL refineries whose relaunch date keeps changing.

Now, it’s the Dangote Refinery that we were told would take care of our local petrol consumption at minimum cost. Its pump price per liter of petrol is now to cost more than imported petrol? Where exactly are we headed as Nigerians? Who are those sworn against the goodness of this country? It makes no sense that every advantage that Nigerians were supposed to get from the removal of oil subsidy is nowhere to be seen around us. The demands keep piling on the people but the gains are constantly denied.

Even when state governments make about three times more by way of monthly allocation, there is hardly anything to show for that. Yet, we were promised additional benefits. With the recent increase in the pump price of petrol from just over N650 to over N800, the gains labour supposedly made from the increase of the minimum wage to N70,000 has been wiped off even before the government has started payment.

Everything seems to have conspired against the people, to keep them perpetually in economic bondage. It is easy to say something would give or for politicians still in opposition to claim they would have done things differently. So President Bola Tinubu and his associates formerly in opposition said. They are in power now and they know better.

While our problem as a country is fundamental and requires a fundamental makeover, there are yet a few things that can be done to make things right only if we can cut down on corruption. With institutions like the NNPCL and others in the oil sector ( limiting the discussion for now), our days of trouble are far from over. Nor is the blame that of the people in power alone. If anything, their most obvious contribution is in their refusal to steer us away from the ostentatious and corrupt living of our better forgotten past.