The Crime Scene That Is NNPC -By Pius Mordi

Umaru Yar’Adua was a decent man, very decent. He believed in the innate capacity of man to do good – for himself, his family, the government and, especially the people. That had been his guiding principle since he went into public service. As governor of his Katsina State, he lived it. That, perhaps, informed Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s decision to headhunt him as his successor. At the tail end of his tour of duty as President, Obasanjo had decided that having failed to get the refineries to rev into gear despite his best efforts after stupendous funds spent for unsuccessful Turn Around Maintenance of the country’s four refineries, he decided to privatise those of Port Harcourt and Kaduna following the acceptance of a $750 million bid of a consortium where Aliko Dangote and Femi Otedola held 51 percent and 20 percent stakes respectively.

Unfortunately, shortly after been sworn in as President, Yar’Adua was persuaded to reverse the sale and the purchase cost refunded to the consortium. The top management and officials of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) spearheaded the grand deception of the then new president, an advocate and apostle of command and control of critical infrastructure by the state. He apparently thought his vision of keeping the refineries within state control would not compromise their efficient running. He never got to know how wrong he was as he passed on barely two years later.

But it was mission accomplished for the cabal at NNPC and their collaborators, including the labour unions. In a report, Reuters news agency said $6 billion was being spent annually on fuel subsidy which would have ended well before Dangote had to build his own refinery from scratch. The Reuters revelation was at a time there was a measure of sanity in the subsidy regime. Subsequently, the cabal went ballistic and upped their dubious game through outright round tripping and forging of documents when no vessel berthed to ship in refined products. With the local consumption of products fraudulently increased to the unprecedented rate of 90 million litres per day at some point, most of it accounted for by phantom importation, smuggling to neighbouring states, it was a season of unprecedented bleeding of the national treasury

The Chief Executive of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, Farouk Ahmed, put daily petrol consumption at around 45 million and 50 million litres at that time, just before Dangote refinery came on stream. With his Refinery having successfully closed the windows for subsidy fraud when it became operational, despite various schemes by the NNPC apparatchiks to frustrate the promoter himself, Aliko Dangote, daily petrol consumption has come to a credible rate that is less than 33 million litres.

The yearly expenditure of $6 billion as subsidy as revealed by Reuters does not include the periodic release of hundreds of millions of dollars for TAMs that were never deployed to make the refineries functional nor the fraudulent contracts regularly and routinely awarded in each of the four refineries.

One of the measures late Muhammadu Buhari, former president, will be remembered for is his appreciably successful effort to combat the oil cabal specialising in phantom delivery of imported products. Buhari stemmed the bleeding with some of the perpetrators even having to refund some of their loot.

But why did Yar’Adua cave in to the cabal and why did he not seek explanations and counsel from his predecessor and boss, Obasanjo?
“I went to him and said ‘why did you do this?’ He said it was because of pressure, Obasanjo said in a recent interview. My view is that it was a clever manoeuvre of Yar’Adua’s sense of patriotism. The narrative that NNPC can run the refineries and keep control on behalf of Nigerians was too palatable to ignore.

Even after Dangote Refinery had come on stream, the NNPC cabal still had one last trump card. They got approval to rehabilitate the refineries with the argument that it was not prudent to lay all Nigeria’s eggs for locally refined petrol in Dangote’s basket. The federal government approved $1.48 billion for the rehabilitation of the Warri and Kaduna refineries. This included $897.67 million for Warri and $586.9 million for Kaduna, with the work to be carried out in three phases, according to Nairametrics. Additionally, $1.5 billion was allocated for the rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt refinery. In sum, the federal government approved nearly $3 billion for the rehabilitation of the three refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna.

We have had enough of the crime scene called NNPC. The new management under Bayo Ojulari, Group CEO, seems to be finally reading the script. After Obasanjo said that with the long years of decay and abandonment, the refineries may not attract more $250 million if sold, Ojulari conceded that this could be the way forward. In fact, that is the only way to go. In an interview with Bloomberg, he said the federal government was considering outright sale of the refineries as the ongoing repairs was “becoming complicated.” It is an unusual and bold concession, but the entrenched hawks within the clumsy oil behemoth and the entire industry will not give up without one helluva battle. They are going to give everything to scuttle Ojulari’s stance.

If President Bola Tinubu wants the upward trajectory that came with the completion of Dangote Refinery to continue, he must not succumb to the humongous pressure and blackmail that will be piled on him by the cabal. For the sake of the future generations and the good of the country, Tinubu should stand firm and privatise the refineries before 2027.

Postscript
*Frustrating long suffering Nigerians*
As a former military head of state and later two-term elected president, Alhaji Muhammadu Buhari was certainly an influential leader. Yes, he made wrong calls, especially in the management of the economy, but he tried to do the right thing within his capacity.
He certainly deserves the honour being bestowed on him by the Tinubu administration. But the President took it to ridiculous levels. The idea of declaring an impromptu public holiday on the day of Buhari’s burial was insensitive to long suffering Nigerians who have resigned themselves to the fact that they are on their own.
At a time every minute and every engagement count in making a living for themselves, Tinubu put spanners in the works with the declaration of a public holiday. There have been great leaders globally, but no leader shuts down his country just to honour a dead former president. I am not sure that knowing what Nigerians are going through, Buhari himself would have welcomed the disruption of the hustle of the people just to honour him.
Already, the National Assembly has suspended seating for seven days to “honour” Buhari. They might as well stop plenary indefinitely. Nigerians will not miss them. The public holiday was purely politically driven, but at a huge cost to Nigerians.