Fuel subsidy: Potent weapon of oppression — FEMI ADEOTI COLUMN

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The tools are sharp and multiple-edged. They violently tear through our hearts. Piercing them into shreds. Their high potency is never in doubt.
That’s the heavy burden we must bear. The rough cross we have to carry. It is our precarious times.
Pity! The cruel holders of the deadly tools do not care a hoot. They use them on us to the maximum. They hold the weapons of mass destruction in great esteem.
They cherish them to our detriment. They lavishly unleash them on us as their bizarre moods dictate. We are at their eerie whims and caprices. We have become easy preys. And victims of their murderous swings and egos.
So? Tag it anyhow. Label it by whatever. Call it by any name. And you can’t be wrong. You are perfectly on spot.
Whichever you choose fits the bill. It’s subsidy by whatever means. Subsidy by mischief. Yes, subsidy through the back door. And subsidy by back hand.
Its twin brother is the exchange rate. They’re together and in one dubious accord. They are the deadly instruments of depression. And government finds it extremely convenient to unloose the duo on us. All at the same time. And with the same deadly intensity.
This government is in great despair. Its desperation is in no small measure. It’s written all over it. Its actions and inactions align perfectly with that of a desperado.
Its search for legitimacy is second to none. And it doesn’t matter where it can secure one: Home and/or abroad. Wherever it finds acceptance.
Its quest for recognition has no near duplicate. It is running from pillar to post. To achieve this, our president is traversing the globe like never before. And with audacious impunity.
Characters in this government are overwhelmed. It’s glaring. That, they can’t deny. They caused it. It’s self-inflicted. How? They refuse to separate their interests from the national interest. They cannot draw a line between the two.
That results in the on-going titanic clash of interests. It’s due to their inordinate ambitions. Every step this government takes has been at huge variance with our interests. Visiting on us sorrow, excruciating pain.
We never realised in good time. The plan to demoralise us started not today. It began the very day this administration happened to us. It was a day we won’t want to remember. But we must. The ugly memories of that May 29, 2023, are festering everyday, unhindered.
They have devised duo as the most potent weapons. And they are using them to oppress us at will. The greater evil is the unending energy crisis; aka fuel subsidy.
Oil is our God-gift. He mercifully gifted it to us. To make life even more abundantly. It’s an instrument of wealth and prosperity. That is what God intended it to be. And He generously dropped it on our laps. At zero cost!
We never sought it. We didn’t ask for it. Yet, He obliged us freely and bountifully. On gold platter! But the ingrate in us would not allow it to manifest. Instead of great fortunes. We make outright misfortunes from our riches.
We make an awkward turn around. By the time we are done. We’re confronted with an evil weapon of oppression. And mass destruction, courtesy of our rulers.
That’s what they made out of our black gold. Wicked and cruel souls. They christen it fuel subsidy removal. That is the bane of our energy insecurity.
It’s ceaseless, endless, et al. They keep on changing its mode and colour to keep it alive. To those mean characters in government. Fuel subsidy can come in any form. And it can be re-formed, remodelled.
You can’t satisfy their inextinguishable appetite. You dare not appease such greed and avarice. They’ve made fuel subsidy a disturbing constant star in our lives. It’s more than an irritant. They take pleasure in our hardship. That’s their own bizarre way of feeling our pains.
Now, the hawks in our oil industry are surrendering. Are they, really? Stranger than fiction. The game is up. Sadly, they have accomplished their devilish mission.
They milked us dry. And turned our treasure to monumental waste and losses. They have satisfied their voracity. They had their fill almost seamlessly. And ran us aground.
Yet, their insatiable appetite can’t be appeased totally. They still ask for a “meagre” $6billion. What a parting gift. That’s what the NNPC claimed it’s owning on our behalf.
It insists we must pay our Shylock creditor-suppliers. To drive some senses into our skulls, they cut supply. That informed the current fuel mess. They are breathing heavily on us. Ferociously waiting to devour us.
But we are convinced beyond reasonable doubt. Something in us tells us that this $6billion is heavily padded. Just like our yearly budget. We’re clear in our minds. This bandied figure cannot be ours. We don’t own it. The reason we utterly disown it.
We have learnt not to trust the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPCL). Not even a bit. This is not good enough. But you dare not blame us. That flows from our ugly past experiences. The unending energy crisis has eroded our confidence in that monster.
It cannot be restored. Not with how the NNPCL is presently constituted. And the weird manner it’s being run. The runners of NNPCL have no feelings for us. They care less whether we live or die. They have cornered the NNPCL. And pocketed it as their inheritance. Covetousness has taken the best part of them. They behave true to type.
They knew all their plans, strategies would not work for us. Their half-hatched policies couldn’t have brought our desperately needed relief. They were aware the way they ran the NNPCL would never lead us anywhere. Yet, they continued treading the same old, odd path. With utmost recklessness.
By that, they made our passage to comfort extremely impossible. They laced our road to survival with landmines. It’s a deliberate intention. They erected obstacles on our road to progress. They never intended any good for us. Never. At any time
They fed fat on our misfortunes. They initiated and celebrated energy crisis. And made fortunes out of our misfortunes. It’s their lucrative cash cow.
While we groaned and moaned. With robust cheeks, they smiled to the bank daily. We have never been on the same page. They are in the world of their own. Living their selfish lives in craven world of their own. They carry themselves around as if tomorrow won’t come.
Now, NNPCL did the ultimate. It has unwisely given up on us. Abandoning us to the ill fate it inflicted on us for the wrong reason. You can’t run anywhere. And there’s certainly nowhere to hide. We are in this mess together. We must swim in it together. And to the very end.
We won’t allow you to ditch us. You held us by the jugular long enough. You turned our black gold against us. You made us an ugly chessboard. There, you played your dirty game with reckless abundance.
Finally! It collapsed the system on us. And shamelessly owned up. Olufemi Soneye, NNPCL Chief Corporate Communications Officer, struggled to persuade us. His terse statement was uninspiring, ambiguous and at best empty:
“NNPC Ltd has acknowledged recent reports in national newspapers regarding the company’s significant debt to petrol suppliers. This financial strain has placed considerable pressure on the company and poses a threat to the sustainability of fuel supply.”
This is to say the least defeatist. This is not clever enough. It is a shoddy way of admitting guilt. It is not good enough for an NNPCL that had pretended to know it all.
We knew that NNPC had lived a fake life. That no single truth was being told of its operations. All were shrouded in top cult-like secrecy.
Remember the N3.7trillion windfall? President Bola Tinubu handed the bounty to NNPCL to “subsidise fuel subsidy.” They labelled it subsidy differentials. Whatever sense that makes to them.
But we ask. What happened to the largesse so soon? Has it gone the drain, like its predecessors? That “goodwill” is too good not to be properly interrogated. It must not end the way others before it ended.
All along. There has been no synergy on fuel subsidy between government and NNPCL. They were perpetually in conflict. They never really agreed on what fuel subsidy is all about. They kept on dribbling without direction.
The Cable confirmed that much. Its report was emphatic: “The official position of the Tinubu administration remains that ‘subsidy is gone’ — although NNPCL projects that it will gulp over N5 trillion this year alone.” See them!
That sordid way, the NNPCL brought us down “from top to bottom.” And landed us in this mud. How did NNPCL metamorphosis from buoyance to utter bankruptcy? And the drivers of NNPCL did that in a record time!
TheCable is ever handy: “Mele Kyari, CEO, NNPCL, informed the president that when subsidy was removed in June 2023, it led to monthly savings of N400 billion.”
But this was acutely short-lived: “In August 2023, NNPCL moved from surplus to negative in fuel importation costs, incurring a subsidy bill of N52.73 billion. This increased to N57.59 billion in September and N212.28 billion in October before ballooning to N665.60 billion in November, when exchange rate had more than doubled from the time subsidy was removed.”
In February 2024, “the bill dropped to N592.09 billion and N497.39 billion in March before rising again to N833.68 billion in April.”  Kyari was scared. He sent an SOS to the president:
“He said the situation had continued to exert ‘undue pressure’ on the NNPCL, leading to its inability to remit royalties and taxes into the federation account.” Not only that: “National energy security was being threatened as the NNPCL might not be able to sustain petrol imports beyond July 2024.”
In August 2023, there was a wild suspicion. That Tinubu was mulling the return of subsidy. Ajuri Ngelale, his spokesman, denied it flatly. He swore, no going back on subsidy removal.
He lied, goofed and erred! TheCable again bore witness: “However, in official communication between NNPC and the president, the word ‘subsidy’ is now liberally used.
“The Muhammadu Buhari administration used ‘under recovery’ in place of subsidy.” But it could not sustain the deceit: “It started using ‘subsidy’ liberally years later.”
We have come to one stark reality. We need to watch their lips more closely.
We’ve realised that when they speak, they mean the exact opposite. That’s one great thing we discovered in our rulers. It’s a takeaway. And we won’t be careless to lose it.
We now know how a ruler feels the pain of the ruled. It’s an insight into the minds and thought process of our maximum rulers.
And in all of this: Where is our honourable Minister, Petroleum Resources? We need to know. They must say something. We can’t be left “unshepherd.”
More so! The ticking time bomb is running faster than envisaged. Nobody knows what happens the next minute…