BY ABRAHAM OGBODO
I am confused. I do not know, who, between Dangote and Tinubu should bear the larger blame for the heightened hardship. It is not the first time that war is happening in the Middle East. The Iraqi wars brought boom and not doom to Nigeria. Domestic fuel prices did not hit the roofs because cost per a barrel of crude had shot through the roofs in the international market. As at last Monday in my location in Delta State, cost of a litre of diesel had shot from N1000 to N1800 and Petrol to N1400 from N860.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is feeling cool about the development. It is another proof of his wizardry in the administration of public finance. He has dragged the country into international pricing systems without basis. The domestic pump price is determined by international cost of crude. That is what Dangote Refinery, the only functional refinery in the country, is trying to tell us with the recent price increases announced by the company. It is extremely hard to understand the purpose of government under Tinubu. Is it about appropriating more money for government or about the wellbeing of the people? To benchmark Nigeria against international systems is the height of irresponsibility. In fact, it is worse than that. It is outright wickedness. It is only in the drive for more revenue for government that the country subscribes to global benchmarks. That is only when government remembers to state the cost of a litre of petrol in America and why the product cannot sell less in Nigeria as if both countries are governed by the same socio-economic indices.
Government performance in Nigeria is not benchmark against global standards. It is in Nigeria that government list as achievement the payment of the salaries of civil servants. Ceremonies are held to present to the people the very things that government was instituted to perform. Building of roads, schools, hospitals and other social/physical infrastructure is applauded. Any government that does this in Nigeria is extraordinary. Ordinary performance is when government runs without building or maintaining infrastructure. Citizens enjoy nothing as a right. Everything, including payment of workers’ salaries, comes as a privilege.
There is not nothing wrong in creating global benchmarks. But such benchmarks should not be invoked to generate benefits for government alone. They should also be applied to bring government to international benchmark. I am saying international oil price should dictate domestic price metrics if the living conditions at home stand at par with international standards. I will actually campaign for global oil pricing if mass transit in Nigeria for instance, is as efficient as any in Europe or even Asia. In a country where public electricity is still a novelty and homes and businesses run on diesel-powered private generators, international pricing systems cannot apply. There is absolutely nothing to explain.
Nigeria is among the top producers of crude oil in Nigeria. It is therefore not too much for government to pretend to be responsive and release crude to Dangote Refinery on terms that would make the citizens feel loved. Let us further disaggregate. About 56 percent or 129 million of Nigeria’s 200 million population are plagued by multidimensional poverty. They live below two dollars a day. The projection is that this percentage may rise to 62 percent or 141 million people in 2026. This is why we need the adoption of international best practices in all ramifications to go with international pricing systems. That is the only macroeconomic balancing that makes sense.
Nigeria did not cause the war in Iran. No country outside the ones that are involved did. It is a force systems on the global community. But governments are defined by their capacities to stand for the people when every other thing fails. They are not defined by endless rationalisation. Passing the entire weight of an emergency on an already over-burdened population is not leadership. It is abdication. President Tinubu is looking for money everywhere to purportedy build a better Nigeria. Build a better country for who? I am trying to understand the President’s idea of a better Nigeria with dead Nigerians. The 2026 budget is predicted on a crude price of about $65 per barrel and a daily production output of about 1.5 barrels. This is also the production quota allocated to the country by OPEC. The country is currently at about 1.4 million barrels per day (mbd). This is not too bad and offers enough buffer to protect Nigerians against the tensions in the Middle East.
As a result of the war in Iran, crude price is now in the neighborhood of $100 per barrel. This is almost twice the size of the projection. It is a windfall that shouldn’t precipitate a storm. There have not been reported production shut-ins. Daily output has remained and perhaps amid the skyrocketing prices. It is good time for a government that made revenue drive a directive principle of state policy. Tinubu has been counting his blessings. To balance the equation, the President should count his responsibilities too. One of them is to work to avoid a needless domestic energy crisis. We do not import crude and we no longer import refined products since the advent of the Dangote Refinery in 2024. What is so difficult to combine existing advantages to safeguard the domestic energy market and by extension, the national economy from vagaries of the turmoil in the Middle East?
The Dangote Refinery needs 650 barrels of crude per day to run at full capacity. To exchange the entire national daily crude output for more dollars is primitive. It is not deregulation. Market forces do not include a special force or a force majeure. This is why organized nations with spare capacities are talking of releasing strategic oil reserves into the market to contain the strains of the war on their economies. The Nigerian situation is quite different. Here, government is seeing a bazaar and not disaster. It is possible that fasting and prayers are fervently going on in Aso Rock Villa for a prolonged conflict. Too fearful to contemplate.
In Nigeria, we do not cultivate spare capacities. And so, the government does not have strategic oil reserves to release into a volatile energy market to bring down prices. But strategic common sense should not be lacking. It does not take technology to cultivate. It takes common sense. It is therefore a problem when both strategic reserves and strategic common sense are lacking at the same time. This describes our current situation as we search for the common sense to understand that no government seeks revenue at the expense of the bigger issues. The bigger issues here are lives, livelihoods and the economy. People and businesses are dying while government operates solely for itself. Nothing is positively rubbing off on the people outside promises of a better tomorrow. That logic is warped. It is today before tomorrow and tomorrow will not come if today does not pass away successfully. You don’t save for a rainy day when it is already raining cat and dog.
The star point about President Tinubu is his courage to do the unthinkable. It is a confidence that comes with a feeling of total victory. For now, Tinubu has won. Nigeria and Nigerians have been conquered and taken captives. In less than three years, Tinubu has reworked the republic into an empire and sits on top as the Emperor. He cannot be questioned. He is the sole custodian of the national interest. His acts and omissions approximate the national interest. Whatever he says or does not say and whatever he does or does not do is good for Nigerians. The people have lost the right to be respectfully engaged as citizens. They have become numbers that can be played up or down for sports and for the pleasure of the grand player.
As usual, we have chosen the only path open for solution – the prayer path. Pastors and Imams are united in prayers for the war in Iran to end quickly so that normalcy can return. There is nothing that God cannot do. Agreed. But in this particular instance, nothing more is expected from God. He did not cause the ongoing war in Iran. Besides, God does not meddle in matters that men or even women can handle competently. This is the point Nigerians and their leaders must understand in order to rise up to the challenges of nation building.
Dangote is doing business not charity. The one that should be doing charity is government. But Tinubu who has capacity for creating great abundance from nothing, almost like God, is ruled by his essential instincts. He sees things differently. He sees profit more than he sees responsibility. In the Iranian war, he has not seen the responsibility to absorb the shocks of the war on the home front. He has only seen more money for government. He is reputed for successfully placing something on nothing.
Some three days ago, Dangote Refinery had issued a statement of succour. A number of the media reports left the message hidden in their headlines, making it seem as if a saviour had finally arisen. In the details however, the import of the reported great relief stopped at a reduction of N100 in fuel prices. This dropped the price of diesel from N1750 to N1650 and petrol from N1300 to N1200 in my location. Under the fuel subsidy regimes, the pice of diesel came less than petrol. The lowest was krerosene. Deregulation has meant new production economics that places diesel and even kerosene ahead of petrol which is also called the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). Maybe Dangote Refinery should explain the metrics for a better understanding. I truly cannot understand why a premium spirit does not attract a higher price than an Automotive Gas Oil (AGO) and Dual Purpose Kerosene (DPK)
This is not wishing for a higher price of petrol. I am saying if all prices run on market forces without subsidy, the current premium status ascribed to diesel is worrisome. Kerosene is even more worrisome. My reading is this. The real market forces in an economy that runs on generators are diabolic profiteers. People who feel justified to subordinate the happines of 200 million people to their quest for more money. These are the ones that ran the government-owned refineries at increasing cost for 30 years without producing a drop of fuel. They are the ones that disabled the 18 or so fuel depots strategically sited across the country to encourage the development of private tank farms and absolute reliance on fuel trucks to bridge products supply to different parts of the country.
They are also the ones that exploit the correlation between diesel and production in Nigeria to make the product only available to the highest bidder. Industries that ran out of breath in the bidding process simply shut down operations.
Back to the current reality. President Tinubu should say something now. Are we to wait till the war in Iran is won and lost to return to pre-war domestic fuel prices? Or this has become yet another expansion of the national malady? And when the President is not speaking or speaking enough, conspiracy theories form rapidly. One of such theories is that the first APC sponsored President of Nigeria called Muhammadu Buhari ate into our future. That he allededly got voracious buyers to pay ahead for Nigerian crude. The simple interpretation is that we are supplying crude to cover money already earned and eaten. They say it is part of factors affecting domestic crude supply to Dangote Refinery because what is left after meeting upfront international obligations can only be rationed to create an impression of normalcy.
I am not here today to explode conspiracies. I have come to take suggestions on how to survive the war in the Middle East. The current approach allegedly dictated by international market and military forces is not sustainable. If it continues as envisaged by PBAT, it will lead to the building of a nation without nationals.
THANK YOU MY BEAUTIFUL READERS. THIS COLUMN SHALL GO ON SABBATICAL FOR ONE YEAR.
