The persistent petrol queues in Nigeria despite the removal of subsidy is a big embarrassment to the nation considering its status among the comity of nations. Nigerians have continually faced intermittent frustration of petrol queues, arbitrary petrol pricing, corruption, and to a large extent, systemic failures within the oil sector.
Many had hoped that scarcity of fuel would end after subsidy on the product was removed by the Federal Government, but rather than the situation improving, the fuel situation has since then become worse to the point that Nigerians are now buying fuel for one thousand naira per litre.
It may interest you to know that Nigeria should not be experiencing fuel shortages at all. The reason is because it is the largest crude exporter in Africa. However, its four public refineries, with a nameplate of 445,000 barrels per day and under the control of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, have been making losses for decades. It behooves the Federal Government to sell them instead of allowing the perennial rehabilitation to continue to gulp billions of dollars without any positive result.
For over 2 weeks now, long petrol queues have been experienced across cities. Citizens have been made to spend longer hours at petrol stations. Not only that, every business in Nigeria depends solely on petrol as movement of goods is essential. The oil marketers have taken advantage of the scarcity, dispensing petrol above the official prices. Once people buy fuel more than the required price, the prices of their goods go up. And never forget that what goes up in the country will never come down. Despite assurances from the authorities, the scarcity has persisted, worsening the economic situation in the country.
In many states, petrol is sold between N880 and N1000 per litre. In some places, it sells for above N1,000/l. Despite the high price, there are still unending queues while the few NNPC station selling at the normal price have lengthy queues. The pain is too much on innocent citizens.
The silence from the government and lack of will to take the bull by the horn is inappropriate. The NNPC initially blamed transhipment for fuel scarcity and accused citizens of panic buying, saying it had 1.5 billion litres in stock. The scarcity persisted in Lagos with long queues while those without queues sells above 1,000 naira per litre.
The main idea behind removal of the petrol subsidy is a shift towards market-driven pricing but the reverse is the case in Nigeria. Subsidy removal could interest private investment in the downstream sector but in Nigeria, the politics is too high making Aliko Dangote to cry out that government is sabotaging his effort to help Nigerians buy fuel cheaper.
To end fuel queues in Nigeria requires government to be truthful and also ready to offend those who had been feeding fat on oil money. Government needs to employ a comprehensive approach that can end systemic issues in the energy sector.
The embarrassment caused by fuel scarcity shouldn’t be a thing that government will close its eye to, instead, it should get rid of the oil sector thieves and people sabotaging its effort. An embarrassment to the country is an embarrassment to all its citizens. It is high time we dealt with this serial monster.
Written by Tosin Adesile