to prevent shutting down services countrywide — the latest business hit by
a months-long fuel crisis in Africa’s biggest oil producer.
Many aircraft have been grounded with foreign airlines diverting to other
African countries to fuel for flights abroad.
Some radio stations have been silenced.
Nigeria’s woefully erratic electricity supply keeps businesses dependent
on diesel generators. Nigeria produces more than 2 billion barrels of
petroleum a day, but imports almost all refined fuel because its
refineries aren’t maintained.
The party of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday accused President
Goodluck Jonathan’s government of deliberately wrecking the economy.
“The whole scenario reeks of sabotage,” spokesman Lai Mohammed said in a
statement. “Never in the history of our country has any government handed
over to another a more distressed country: No electricity, no fuel,
workers are on strike, billions are owed to state and federal workers, 60
billion dollars are owed in national debt and the economy is virtually
grounded.”
Buhari takes office on Friday.
MTN Nigeria, which has 50 million-plus customers, tweeted that cellphone
service will start deteriorating in 24 hours if it doesn’t find diesel.
Some customers already are experiencing problems and Nigeria’s landline
network collapsed years ago.
“MTN’s available reserves are running low and the company must source for
a significant quantity of diesel in the very near future to prevent a
shutdown of services across Nigeria,” corporate services executive
Akindale Goodwill tweeted.
The crisis began when oil suppliers, hit by tightened credit lines and
unpaid interest, said the government owes them as much as $1 billion for
fuel and subsidies going back to October 2014. They said they could no
longer afford to supply fuel.
Oil tanker drivers unpaid by the suppliers started striking last week and
were joined Thursday by other oil workers.
The government, reeling from halved international prices for petroleum
that provides more than 80 percent of its revenue, is so cash-strapped it
is borrowing to pay salaries, the finance minister said earlier this
month.
Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala denied the debt on Friday, telling
journalists the suppliers are asking the government to pay their foreign
exchange differential losses caused by the naira’s slump from about 160 to
the dollar in December to today’s 218.
She accused oil suppliers of holding Nigerians to ransom and said she has
asked the Central Bank of Nigeria to verify the figures because “there has
been so much fraud allegations and scams in this business of oil
marketing.”