Fuel Subsidy ‘Beneficiaries’THE Senate’s probe of the obvious abuses that surround expenditures on importation of petroleum products will be a waste of time without a focus. What is the Senate probing? What does it intend to achieve?

Celebration of the list of companies the Senate released as beneficiaries of fuel subsidy of N3.655 trillion over five years (2006 to 2011), appears to be the result of the investigation. It taints the companies, some of which could be doing genuine business by the impression that all of them were involved in wrongdoing.

The listing also fails to answer fundamental questions about why government spends such money on the importation of fuel and the improprieties that arise from clothing administration of a part of our lives in secrecy.

Fuel importation is a business. There are ground rules for it. If every party kept to those rules things would have been easier to handle. Collaboration between government officials and willing business people, however, has resulted in a muddle that spins off billions of Naira to “beneficiaries” many of whose names never appear on any list. They are the real “beneficiaries” of fuel subsidy.

On a short list of the beneficiaries would be the government officials who paid these hefty sums, politicians who generate the list of companies approved to import the products and another set of government officials who act with impunity because they know the scores.

They are the reasons for the rising cost of subsidy. In only eight months of 2011, Nigeria spent N1.426 trillion on subsidy, more than one-third of five years’ expenditure. Why the sharp increase in expenditure, especially in 2011? Why has the number of companies associated with the import grown from three to 38?

Neither name-calling nor disagreement about the exact figures is helpful. The Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA that is at the centre of these matters acts with impunity, spending unapproved money on importation of products. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has unbecoming arrogance whenever there are questions are its dealings.

NNPC knows too much about improprieties in the oil industry. The number of people compromised over the years increases daily. When investigations begin, they end abruptly, at the critical moments when solutions are in sight. The secrecy about a construction company mentioned in the fuel subsidy investigation is a first in names that will be concealed. Was the construction company importing fuel? Did it meet the requirements for importation, among them the ownership of a tank farm? How many of the 38 companies meet the requirements, which are not enough to end the abuses that cause the bogus subsidy figures?

Central to the investigation is how the refineries will work. They may not have the capacity to end imports but at least the cost of keeping their idle staff could be saved. However, the committee may discover that there is a link between the perpetual turn-around maintenance of our refineries and the booming import of petroleum products.

Are we expecting interests that have created a business with an annual worth of trillions of Naira to disappear? Another description for subsidy is the penalty imposed on Nigerians for the inefficiencies in the supply of petroleum products.

The senate investigation would have failed if it does not find solutions to the inefficiencies.