Ifeanyi Izeze
If the new Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) Maikanti Baru believes that going to “undertakers” to seek advice on how to re-position and profitably run the corporation is the best option for him, then he definitely needs to be helped to wake up his ideas.
Is it not laughable or rather a national disgrace that the league of all living former group managing directors of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) could shamelessly be the ones asking for a fresh jack – up of the price of petrol barely few months after the last episode when in actual sense they should hide their heads in shame for running the organisation aground?
How do you reconcile that all the living former group managing directors of the state run oil firm recently after a meeting with the current group managing director could be advising the government to upwardly review the pump price of petrol? Citing foreign exchange shortages, exchange rate and competition in the downstream sector, the ex-GMDs had stated that the N145 per litre for petrol was no longer sustainable.Are these “enemies of Nigeria” not supposed to be in jail by now for callously running down the nation’s apex oil concern especially the refineries? If the former NNPC bosses lived –up to their responsibilities when they held sway at different times in the recent past life of the corporation as an integrated oil business concern, would this country be importing petrol and other petroleum products today?
Rightly put by the Chairman of Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Senator Sabi Abdullahi, “The NNPC as an institution was expected to be the live-wire of this nation. As we have all known, refineries that we have in Nigeria have not been functional because if they had been functional and if that institution had been up and doing in tandem with its peers in other countries that have similar resource endowment like ours under the directorship of these former GMDs, we wouldn’t have been in this mess.”Do the ex-GMDs have any sense of dignity/conscience or rather shame at all? Were these dishonest and grossly inept bunches not the very ones that created all the problems we are currently facing in the nation’s oil sector especially the downstream sub- sector where mere cracking of the crude to produce distillates has been made to look like rocket science in this country?
How can they step out to now advise us on how to sustainably run the industry? On what moral ground are they standing to do that? Where they not the ones that created the pathetic state in the first instance? And as rightly asked by Senator Abdulahi, “They are more or less acting as enemies of the people and even the government they are advising.” How you can solve a problem under the same condition that created it?
Walai, the President has to watch this bunch of ex-NNPC bosses because they may be working with enemies of Nigeria on a mission to cause problem for this government. Is it not actually an irony that those we should be holding responsible for the non-functional state of the country’s refineries and the non-profitability of the NNPC as a business concern are the ones forming a trade union to coerce the present government on implementing anti-people policies in the same outfit they grounded?
The three and half existing refineries under the care of the NNPC, how many can boast (honestly speaking) of 30 percent installed capacity utilization? None! It has now become a fad to blame militant attacks on the pipelines for all the woes of the refineries as if when there were no attacks the refineries were doing better.I have severally advised the federal government to actually look beyond the aggrieved militants of the Niger Delta region in its quest to permanently address the spate of deliberate vandalisation of oil facilities particularly NNPC pipelines in the Niger Delta and beyond. The NNPC people may actually be involved in these destructions to cover-up their ineptitude and corruption-infested way they carry on the business of administering our oil concern.
Unknown to many Nigerians, the federal government is still heavily subsidizing the price of petrol through the NNPC. For almost one year now, the NNPC has been providing over 90 percent of imported petrol used domestically in this country through the covert subsidy scheme.If most of the independent marketers are getting petrol from the NNPC, is this not an indirect case of subsidy? Most independents buy from the NNPC at local price and that is why almost all of them sell at the peak price of N145 per litre with some even selling as high as N160- N170 because they have to make their own profits also.
Nobody including the league of ex-GMDs are seriously thinking on how to redress the continued 100 percent reliance on importation for our domestic need rather they are more concerned with jacking up the prices of the imported product and maintaining the status quo ante. Is that how we are going to make progress as a nation?
Thank God that at least for now, President Buhari has bluntly refused to accede to the demands of the Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, Baru and the league of his failed predecessors. How could Kachikwu get himself into joining the NNPC GMD to even present the position of the ex-GMDs on “appropriate pricing of fuel” to the president? Walai change should actually begin with those in public offices rather than with the ordinary Nigeria. Nigeria shall be great again, Amen!!(IFEANYI IZEZE: iizeze@yahoo.com; 234-8033043009)