It was shocking, reading on some online news portal that some people went to protest at the NIgeria National Petroleum Corporation Ltd (NNPC) headquarters building in Abuja that the Group Managing Director, Mr Mele Kyari, should resign over the high cost of petrol, queue at petrol stations and mismanagement of the Nigerian petrol market.
What baffles one is how come the protesters will march to a limited liability company and ask the Managing Director to resign over petrol pump prices that is far beyond his capacity as an individual to control. In fact, it has now gone beyond the capacity of NNPC itself as an organisation engaged in petroleum business to do anything to bring back the fuel subsidy that has been removed by the Federal Government.
In fact, if not for NNPC, Nigerians would not have enjoyed the price of petrol that we all enjoyed after the past government did not earmark any fund in the 2023 budget past the month of June, 2023 for fuel subsidy.
Put more appropriately, according to Alhaji Umar Ajiya, the Chief Financial Officer of NNPC in the Punch Newspaper of August 26, 2024, the NNPC covered a shortfall of about ₦7.8 Trillion Naira in the first seven months of 2024 for petrol pump price. That in a lay man’s term is fuel subsidy. That is if not for NNPC we would have been buying fuel for the landing cost of ₦1,000 plus since June 2023.
If not for NNPC’s first agreement with Dangote Refinery to be the sole off taker of every litre of petrol produced by the refinery, we would all have been subjected to the present price of petrol that sells above a thousand naira.
Now that the Presidential Committee on Naira for Crude, led by Mr Wale Edun, the Minister for Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy have now pronounced that the downstream sector of the petroleum industry is now completely deregulated, one marvels at exactly what the protesters want by asking NNPC to bring down the price of petrol.
One dare ask, what exactly will the resignation of Kyari achieve in relation to curbing the queue at petrol stations or in bringing down the price of petrol ? I would have expected the protesters to have better aligned their protest to better options of bringing the price of petrol down.
NNPC is now a limited liability company governed by the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) and the duty of the company is solely to abide by the dictates of the Act by filing a yearly annual return at the Company registry and tabling such at the Annual General Meeting of the company, which has been done for two consecutive years. So, one would have expected the protesters to have gone through the Audited Financial Report of the company and more appropriately, encourage the management of NNPC to up the ante in bringing the three NNPC refineries to work again and see that Nigerians better enjoy the dividends that accrues from NNPC as a limited liability company.
Moreso, they should have protested at the incessant increase in price by the Dangote Refinery which definitely affects the pump price. Or, what can NNPC do when Dangote Refinery sells to trucks at ₦990 per litre ?
Are the protesters expecting NNPC to go against the full deregulation of the petrol sector and put in a regime of subsidy again or what ? How exactly does the protesters want NNPC to act in the issue of petrol pricing when they, exactly like the Press Release from Dangote Refinery, are accusing every importer or supplier of petrol, whose price is lower than the present price of Dangote Refinery as supplying Nigerians with substandard petrol ? How come the songs from the two birds chirping at the same time is the same ? How is every price of petrol lower than what Dangote Refinery puts out as its price, substandard to the petrol supplied by them ? Is Dangote Refinery now the sole supplier and sole regulator of every petroleum product that is of standard value ?
Can the protesters themselves see their naivety in this ? What one would have expected from them is simply suggesting ways in which Nigerians can better enjoy the berthing of a huge, brand new petrol refinery in Nigeria via a low pump price of petrol.We dare ask them, how ? We dare ask them whether a monopoly can best bring the price of petrol down if every stakeholder decide to fold their hands and heed to their demand of accepting every petrol price of Dangote Refinery, hook, line and sinker ?
We implore them to seek better knowledge and solutions that can best bring sanity to the petroleum sector and a better pricing of petroleum products to Nigerians, instead of carrying placards all over the place. The best bet at this period, in order to find succour for Nigerians is dialogue that entails good reasoning. Let all hands be on deck.
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