One of the highlights of the first, so-called, civilian government after our painful dealings with military rulers was the selling off of many of our joint assets to the friends, cronies and surrogates of the government that was soon to reluctantly vacate the corridors of power. In the process of gathering where they did not sow, they had injured each other severely. And so, by the time they were leaving office, the most powerful members of that government, together with their gangs of hangers-on were no longer on speaking terms. So deep were the antiparthies within and between them that today, two decades after the great falling apart, they are still in the habit of taking pot shots at each from deeply entrenched but hardly concealed positions.
On the eve of their departure from office, they somehow contrived to sell the four government owned crude oil refineries at a price which for its paltryness, does not deserve to be mentioned at this time. The buyer then was none other than Aliko Dangote, now the proud owner of the largest single train crude oil refinery in the world. This sale was,for any number of reasons, prevented from being consummated by the incoming government and the deal fell through. What has happened to those refineries since then is a catalogue of sorry history. In the end, the ownership of the refineries reverted to the NNPC for further mismanagement and twenty years later they are still swallowing huge chunks of dollars for nothing. In the meantime, the country has been suffering from an energy deficit that is wholly incompatible with development.
Ever since 1974 when in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, the Arabs wrapped their fingers tightly around their oil pipelines, crude oil has figured prominently in global discussion about the future of the world. The immediate consequence of the Arab control of their oil was to send the price of crude oil into a steep upward trajectory. Whilst the rest of the world groaned under pressure of increased oil prices, Nigeria and other oil producing countries were floundering under the weight of the petrodollars which poured into their coffers in what appeared to be a never ending stream. Prominent among these countries was Nigeria. So much money was coming into the country that the military head of state at the time declared that money was no longer our problem but how to spend it. And how badly we spent it on all manner of baubles that caught our fancy. We spent that money with so much ferocity that it was gone within no more than five glorious years. And then, we became poor but not before we picked up a slew of intolerably bad habits which since then we have found impossible to shake off. Chief among these habits was corruption and following very closely behind was our disdain for work of any kind, not to talk about work of the hard variety. Money was to be had in government coffers and many people had unfettered access to government money, in and out of government owned facilities. True, the governments of the day made some attempt to provide some facilities for public use, it was soon apparent that government spending was no more than a smoke screen under which a lot of money was simply diverted into private pockets, to be used for the purchase of their very own domestic comfort. The result of the confluence of those effects is that the government has become an avenue for the provision of loot on a grand scale for all those who had access to it. Nowhere was this more glaring than in the oil and gas sector of what passes for the Nigerian economy. A class or entire corps of players in our economy has arisen to feed on the rest of us. These people have become so used to enjoying their criminal privileges that they will stop at nothing to protect their interests.
Throughout the period of endemic fuel shortages, the mechanisms of the oil market were under the control of the NNPC. It is the largest government owned oil company in Africa and with assets north of $150 billion, it is a powerful player in the global oil industry. Since its formation in 1977, the NNPC has assumed the role of a government within the government of Nigeria. It is that powerful and whoever is in charge of it is most certainly a person of distinction within the Nigerian power structure. To put it bluntly, this company gradually but purposefully acquired enough clout to become a law unto itself.
It is a company whose accounts were not, or indeed could not be audited for years. It operated behind a screen of opacity so that the harder you looked, the less you could see or discern. Given this situation, this company can be compared to the mafia. Everyone knew they existed but hiding under a corporate fog, their existence could not be proven. Their final cloak was provided by successive Presidents who also retained the post of Minister of Petroleum Resources. After all, with the sale of crude oil providing all the fuel that powered the economy, keeping direct control of the NNPC was crucial to the health of that economy. However this has not enhanced the performance of this company and the consequence of this has been seen in the endless queues at petrol stations all over the land, a phenomenon that had become endemic over a period of fifty years.
The last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was when the authorities of the Central Bank, joined in the operation to sabotage the national economy. To be fair, no collusion between the bank and NNPC has been discovered but between the two bodies, the nation was brought to its knees around Christmas in 2022. As usual, there was an acute shortage of fuel but even if there was fuel, there was no money in circulation to buy the fuel with. And this because the Central Bank had withdrawn all currency notes from circulation even as new notes were being printed to replace them. A humongous sum of money was set aside for this purpose, money that could and should have been set aside for more productive ventures. This was at a time when the NNPC had contracted debts the servicing of which included money from the sale of crude oil which was not due to be pumped out of the ground for many months into the future. The country was flat broke even though political parties were campaigning seriously for support in the imminent general elections for which hopeful politicians were burning off billions of Naira as they wooed a shell shocked electorate. The government that was eventually elected rewarded the bemused electorate with the double whammy of a near five times increase in the price of petrol and the exposure of the fragile Naira to the gale force winds of the unforgiving market place. The good people of Nigeria were caught in a vicious bind from which escape has been impossible since then.
Throughout this period of discomfiture, the only light from the East was the persistent rumour of the imminence of the commencement of a refinery that was being built in Lagos by Aliko Dangote. But there was little room for hope because the building, equipping and commissioning of that refinery appeared to have taken forever to become reality. In the midst of our vast desert, it was becoming apparent that it was at best a mirage and at worst a giant hoax. After all, the project was first mooted in 2013 and due for completion in 2016. Seven years later, petrol was yet to come out of the refinery and our collective hearts sank when the NNPC, broke and broken as it was, announced that it was going to take a 20% stake in the refinery. Finally, in September of 2024, the news broke that petrol was finally coming out of the refinery and we heaved a collective sigh of relief. Little did we know at the time that the struggle for home refined fuel was only just beginning.