Bekeme: Guys, how you doing today? This is Bekeme, aka Mummy GO, and you’re listening to the Good Citizen show. How’s it going? I’d love to hear from you today. We’re having an interactive conversation today on the fuel scarcity in Nigeria. Is it a game of corruption or expectation? That’s what we want to know. So, remember, the show is funded by Act Foundation and is brought to you by CSR-in-Action. And remember that we’re here to remind ourselves that we must be productive members of our society and that we should plan to vote come February 2023. But today on the show we’re talking about the unending fuel scarcity. It’s the festive season, yet many Nigerians are worried about petroleum. How do they get access to petroleum? How do they get to work? Filling stations are filling up, the queuse expand to the end of the earth. Some stations are selling petrol above 230 miles per liter, while some ridiculously as high as 300 naira. Like I said, I like most of them. Make this an interactive session and you can call 0700923923923. And to buttress, this is the fact that Christmas season is here we are already grappling with the fact that rice costs over 40,000 nah for a 50kg bag, up from about 20 something about a year ago. And we’re already wondering how we’re going to deal with the newer prices. Most things that one buys on the market these days is times three the costs. And then we’re done dealing with fuel scarcity which has led to serious increments in traffic fares. I sent my driver today to Ikeja and my goodness, it took him about 6 hours to go from Lekki to GRA through and fro. It took him over 3000 naira, even though he had to trek. So, he leaves at 10:00, he waits at the bus stop for over an hour, he gets a bus, He couldn’t get a bus to take him towards GRA and then he takes one towards Anthony and then he treks all of the way and it’s like that on the way back as well. I said to him you know what, let’s get a heading right on the way back. And he was like its times three to cost less, my brother. And so, it took him another 3 hours to come back. It’s crazy. And this is how it’s affecting so many people across the nation. I was talking to my staff recently and they were telling me one of the parents actually run a clinic here in Lagos and I think it’s somewhere in Ikorodu and the torture that they have to go through to be able to fund the equipment that they need to use to save lives daily is something else. Because when we think about it, I think how do I get to work? How do I move from point A to B? How do I fuel my car? But what we’re talking about saving lives, we’re talking about a profession that is such an everyday profession as needed for life, as medicine, and people cannot access it. Firstly, it’s a problem having to rely on generators to light up buildings. And then we’re not talking about generating sets. Almost twenty-four-seven, the expense, the emissions for pollution. Yet it’s even hard to get. It’s a crazy situation. Many people have complained, what is this? Are we being exploited? Is it just another round of corruption? This is a country that is one of the largest producers of oil in the world, or the 9th largest producer of crude oil, yet we input all of our PMS. We don’t have a functional refinery. Nothing seems to be working. There is a problem of Nigeria I did. So, we want to have an interactive session and you can call 0700923932923. So, we do have people that we want to have conversations with today. And as we wait your call, we do have people who want to have conversations with we have Mr. Meka Olowola, who is a communication expert and an oil and gas expert as well. And then we have Charles Ego as well, who will be joining us to discuss this issue. So currently do we have Charles on the call?
Charles: Yes, I’m here.
Bekeme: Hello Charles, thank you for calling. Thanks for joining us today and the Good Citizen show. How are you doing today?
Charles: Thank you very much for having me. I’m great. I hope you’re doing good too.
Bekeme: I’m doing good, I’m doing good. One of the blessings I see imagine the blessings that we thank you. We don’t have to cure by ourselves to buy the fuel. That’s a blessing. That is a big blessing in the Nigeria that we’re in today. The fact that you don’t have to do it yourself. You have to wait to see whether someone actually finds the fuel for you. But at least you don’t have to queue out all night to get the fuel yourself. So, thank you once again for joining me. So, tell me, how has this been for you?
Charles: Well, it’s affecting everyone. It’s affecting all businesses. Even if you don’t own a business is affecting you. Man hours are reduced because you probably have to send someone to the billing station or you go by yourself. You may end up doing about 6 to 7 hours, if you are lucky, against you. If you’re not lucky, you don’t get man hours wasted. How many hours do you have to work? I mean, in the real sense of the word? Good. So, if you’ve taken 6 or 7 hours away out of your production day, then it means you have you could you could already begin to see the impact on the economy. It trickles down. Businesses are suffering seriously and we are talking about fuel scarcity. It didn’t start with fuel. Aviation fuel has been an issue. Flight from Lagos to Abuja now is like three times the cost.
Bekeme: I think that’s really scary. It’s a good thing to go back up. Yes.
Charles: Then there’s ago diesel cost. Most businesses generate power because of the epileptic nature of a public power. So, you have to rely on running your generators which run on diesel. The prices of diesel are also above the roof. Now, if this is beginning to look like the case of the chicken and the egg, if you are going to transport the petrol from the depots to some other places, the transporters are lamenting the high cost of diesel as being responsible. So you can begin to imagine the ripple effects on your generator. You can’t power your machines if they are on diesel, then food. To bring food from the farms or through the distributive channels to the markets. Of course, the cost has to go up because the cost of fuel has gone up. So, the inflation that is already high will tend to be even higher than it is. And then to add to that, you are in the Christmas season already. This is December so the impact of all of this could only be better imagined.
Bekeme: That’s amazing. This is crazy. And actually, brought up the issue of aviation fuel. It just occurred to me that we could buy our tickets much earlier in the past. Just last year you could get for as low as 18,000-25,000 and then now it’s at least 65,000. If you’re very lucky, you got a one-way flight for 55,000. I’ve heard that now that people are traveling home for Christmas, prices have actually tripled. Like one-way tickets as high as 125. One way to the East?
Charles: Yes. Even transport by road has also gone up. Somebody told me that from the East down to Lagos is around 20,000 by road. It’s crazy. And what is surprising is I am in Nigerian and I’ve voted a number of times in Nigeria, most times during election years. These politicians have their way of doing things to make sure that everything works out well so that they can be voted.
Bekeme: But not this time.
Charles: But not this time. It’s a horrible one, my dear.
Bekeme: Let’s backtrack a bit. What do you do?
Charles: Okay, I’m a communications person. I run programs on TV. I also own a couple of hotels. Of course, all of this deal on diesel and petrol.
Bekeme: So that’s why I asked that question.
Charles: So, I run the hotel. I have like 25 KVA generators. It must run. If you have like 20/30% room occupancy, you’re going to part it’s all the same anyway. But you won’t say because you don’t have a full house you won’t run it. So, it means every little profit you think you are going to get is eroded by the high cost of fuelling. Fuelling generally not to include both diesel and petrol. And to think that Nigeria produces crude, a high quantity of which is stolen. So, we can refine because our refineries are down and then the one who want to send abroad much of it is stolen also. And then there’s a subsidy fraud also mentioned to it. People bring in ships and they claim that they have brought in fuel. So, it could be empty vessels, less subsidy. So, it’s a crazy situation and it needs to be properly sanitized.
Bekeme: It does need to be sanitized because I’ve also realized in our research as well that even ships that are going, shipments that are going out are quoted for less. So, they could quote the agent half of it because somebody wants to make some money from it. And, this is perpetuated by all sorts of people, from government to people who work within the oil firms to communities. So, it seems like a lot of people are complicit in this mess that we’re in. Which is why we always say, you know what, it’s not just about one pressing in leadership, it’s about our attitude. So, what do you think is a solution to this problem that we keep on facing?
Charles: The number one solution. First and foremost, let me add that this issue is a Nigerian problem. It is not the leadership alone. Don’t forget that if the leadership emerges out of the follower ship, and every people get the kind of leadership they deserve. So, if we don’t just blame the leaders, what are we doing on our own as humans, as Nigerians? So, it has to be us. We must have a holistic view about how to resolve this problem. But looking at it critically, for me that idea of subsidy should be removed forth with if you are going to live sure to the varieties of the market, though initially it may go up, it may oscillate up and then eventually even out.
Bekeme: Absolutely. Because of the multiple players who are competing against each other.
Charles: Don’t tell us you have the subsidy and then you subsidize fraud. Take the fuel, take it abroad, sell it and then they claimed that’s the fuel we are using, some persons will bring in half leading tankers of petrol or empty, just collect money and they say they have collected subsidy. That idea of subsidy should stop. Number two, if our refineries are not working, let them be privatized or sell them off. Let go and use the money. Leave it to the open market. If you can run a business properly, less people will know how to run a business. Run a business. I’m thankful that a Dangote refinery will come up soon by next year. By the grace of God. If those other refineries in Port Harcourt and Warri and Kaduna privatize and sell them off, let them walk. As we speak, people are in these offices collecting money from government, collecting huge salaries, and have not refined a single barrel of crude for as long as I can remember, money is been paid there. So, by the time you do some of these basic things, some of the fraud will be removed. There will be funds left for government to do other things. We will refine our own crude here. There may be no need to go and be saying you are importing fuel from another country. That way, initially the cost may go up, or if you even up and we won’t locate. This is how much we are buying for it to be available. We start having these issues long before now it stopped and now we are back again. I don’t know how old you were during the Abacha period when Abacha was president. Good. Then I was driving cars already, so I could tell you we were queuing to buy a fuel.
Bekeme: I was almost driving a car.
Charles: The queues were massive but now during the Obasanjo years, it kind of fizzled out. We had some form of stability and now it’s back again. So, it makes me wonder, are we leaving forward or we’re living one step forward and steps backwards? We need to come clean and decide on what to do and be decisive about it.
Bekeme: Yes, thank you so very much. I mean, I agree with the analysis. Sadly, it’s something that experts, non-experts have been saying for years and years. But it doesn’t seem like anybody much is listening. And the big concern really is that a lot of people accomplish it and are benefiting from this. But thank you once again for emphasizing something that we should all know about. Thank you for joining us. So, to everyone who’s listening, every time that this comes up, do not allow yourself to be played. If there is any discussion around the government seeking to ratify anything around ending subsidies, do not allow the car to befooled. Do we have a call? Okay, so the number to call is 070092392393 And we’re talking about the fuel subsidies, and fuel scarcity, is it a gain of corruption and exploitation? We’ve been seeing that the impact of scarcity means that you have all sorts of charlatans on the street selling diesel that you don’t know what it’s been mixed with. And these people are feeding fat off of the discomfort of Nigerians. I can’t remember the last time I saw this, saw it this bad, with tons of people with jerry cans of what may or not may or may not be pure fuel on the roads. And then when you think about what government is doing and how the reaction is only recently the NNPC has finally provided reasons for this fuel scarcity being experienced in Lagos, Abuja and some other major cities. And in that reaction, they’ve blamed the fuel scarcity and long queues at the filling stations on some road projects going on in Lagos. I think that’s a fantastic excuse. It’s stating as well that it will increase its supplies in various depots across the country. Meanwhile, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria, IPMA, has said the distribution crisis is caused actually by vandalism of belonging to the NNPC that can be blamed for the scarcity impact of the country. And he also says that whilst NNPC will tell you that they have sufficient stock, in reality the stocks may actually be on the high seas and not actually in our tanks on ground. So how do you actually say that you have enough stock when it’s still on the high seas? Like, how do you stretch your straw from here all the way to the high seas to actually utilize the stock? So that could also be a problem. So today we’re discussing how this fuel scarcity has affected you. And we’re having another conversation with Mr Meka Olowola who is also a director CSR-in-Action and, as I said earlier, an expert in oil and gas affairs. Hello Meka.
Meka: Hello Bekeme
Bekeme: Thank you for joining us today on the Good Citizen Show.
Meka: It’s a pleasure to be here.
Bekeme: Okay, so what do you think is happening and how has this affected you?
Meka: So, I think that for someone who’s been in the industry for so long, unlike the last speaker, spoke so very well about these issues, it gets a point where one just gets to be a bit disenchanted with everything that’s going on. Right. These are conversations that we shouldn’t be having in this day and era as a nation. But unfortunately, we keep going back to it. The government says the few queues are largely due to ongoing road infrastructure projects around Apapa and the access road challenges in some parts of Lagos and the depots. The last of two months ago that occurred several months ago. How about the one from last year? About two years ago. So sometimes I think that some of these excuses are just churned out without consideration for the sensibilities of the public.
Bekeme: Like we’re not smart enough to dimension the things that are happening.
Meka: Yeah, we’ve been having this conversation since I was the secretary of the Major Marketers PR Association in 2005, where the campaign started, and we’re trying to sensitize the nation on the need to deregulate as a way to end. Please note this, we were advocating for deregulation not just to ensure adequate availability of refined petrol products in the country, but as a way to end the subsidy fraud. Do you get it? Is a fundamental problem, right? You will find that prices will go up, right? Because the landing cost of PMS in Nigeria today is hovering around 400 per liter. And it’s been sold in the gas stations for 181,179 in some places. Do you get it? Nobody denies the fact that there’s a huge disparity between the landing price and what is actually dispensed in the gas station. But fundamentally, where the issue is Nigeria claims or NNPC claims, Nigeria consumes 16 million liters per day of refined petroleum products. Right. All experts, except those who work for the government, say it’s about 30 to 32 million liters.
Bekeme: Really?
Meka: Therein lies your fundamental problem. That’s not in some cases. So, when we pay $5 million every year for subsidy-on-subsidy claims, imagine the amount of money that has been taken without any…
Bekeme: Can you hold on a second and see if we can take that call?
Caller: Hello, good evening.
Bekeme: Hello. Good evening. Thank you for calling the Good Citizen Show. What’s your name, please?
Emeka: My name is Emeka Aaron.
Bekeme: Okay Emeka. Thank you. What’s your contribution to the discussion, please? So, we have a guest on the show talking. You must have listened to what he’s been saying. Meka Olowola. Can you tell us your views on this? How is this affecting you?
Emeka: It’s affecting because it’s difficult for you to do a lot of things because you need to power almost everything that you have. And not having it makes it very difficult for you to even move around. It’s affecting the whole thing that you have to do. You’re in traffic because people who are trying to get fuel are queuing on the road and walking everywhere. You can’t move and you’re seeing a lot of people, a whole lot of people going to walk, stranded on the road looking for how to pass. So, it’s really a difficult situation for a lot of people, right?
Bekeme: It is. And do you have a job, I suppose?
Emeka: Yes, I do.
Bekeme: So how do you get fuel to get to work?
Emeka: Sometimes, the last one I bought is about 15,000 to fill the fuel tank which normally 7000 would have done.
Bekeme: Wow. But you bought from an actual filling station, not the roadside?
Emeka: Yeah, I bought from the filling station about 220 naira per liter
Bekeme: At least we are not afraid that your engine may knock as a result of adulterated fuel, so thankful for that.
Emeka: That’s really a difficult situation right now for a lot of Nigerians and we just hope that the government would look into this because we don’t even know who to channel our complaints to. Is it an NNPC? Is it the market or is it the federal government? Because they’re all just playing around with the situation. They keep telling us the refineries we have here are not working. But there are a lot of people who are employed in those refineries that are receiving salaries from it. So, who are those people?
Bekeme: Thank you very much, Emeka. And I think that that’s the question that I hope Meka can use to wrap up this segment of the Good Citizen Show. Who do we actually lay a complaint to? You’ve been talking about some of the maladministrations that just seem to go with the situation that we find ourselves in. So, Meka, you were saying?
Meka: I think in all of these things, leadership still has to take responsibility and it still has to be governmental and political leaders. Right. Because one decision by them will go, one right decision by them will go a very long way in fixing these problems. And one of the things that we need to start to examine is to depoliticize the decision to deregulate or not, right? And to just channel how much I was talking earlier on about the wastage right? And the fact that we spent $5 billion every year on subsidy claims. Right. That’s about 15/16% of our entire budget. There are people who can just sit down and get half of that for doing nothing. You can imagine how they will be tenacious about not changing the status quo.
Bekeme: Correct.
Meka: So, because yes, indeed, when you deregulate people prices will go up. Right. The international price will not be benchmarked against international fuel prices is generally high because what you then do is that instead of paying the subsidies into the pockets of the fuel, channel it into palliatives for the people who would have suffered, you go and invest in transportation, subsidized transportation. Do all of those things have cooperative self-food and all of that? Give it to agriculture operatives and all of that. Right. Then give to a few people who are just feeding fat, channel the money into building refineries, for example. Do you get it? Yes, it’s going to come with 650,000 barrels a day capacity. Right. That would go some way in ameliorating the issues. But we need to have our own refineries as well, right? We’ve indeed, we are consuming up to 60 million litres a day. That is what we don’t believe. But we still need to come and develop our refining capacity because a nation that is a net oil-producing country, right? We shouldn’t be in this situation at all. No, we shouldn’t.
Bekeme: Thank you so much, Meka. We shouldn’t and we will not continue. And you have the opportunity to change that in the upcoming elections in February 2023. Vote the right thing. Not your fake conscience, but the actual thing, your conscience that thinks about the long-term vision for everyone, that thinks about everyone who benefits good things from this. And that’s why this Christmas, as we know how much the pressures of the scarcity smaller businesses are facing, we are actually giving out gifts, we’re giving out grants, to four small businesses this Christmas. Do follow us on all of our social media handles facebook, Instagram and Twitter to find out more information so you don’t miss out. Thank you so much again. Do not forget to get and use your PVCs. You’ve been listening to me Bekeme on the Good Citizen Show. My own handle is Bekemeo. So, follow me and let’s continue this conversation. Take care. God bless. Bye.
