By Comrade Gabby Adeagbo

IT makes an interesting reading going through the article written in The Punch Newspaper of Monday May 4, 2015 by Mr. Tolu Ogunlesi and a report credited to former president of Trade Union Congress, TUC, Mr. Peter Esele, urging the incoming President Muhammadu Buhari to reform the NNPC in 100 days “or be sucked in.”

The summary of that article by Ogunlesi and demand of Esele is that the oil and gas industry has been mismanaged and has been a source of disappointment and embarrassment to the generality of the Nigerian people.  In other words, it is simply a bad testimony of how government policy has failed to meet the aspiration of the public.  It revealed the failure of public policy of government.  For any Nigerian, this should be a cause for concern. Nigeria is a mono-economy nation!  Oil is our lifeline.  In other serious nations, this kind of deliberate calculation can attract very strict punishment such as long incarceration in confinement or even death.  Can any Chinese national get away with this deliberate act?  Tolu Ogunlesi  and Peter Esele should be congratulated for informing the general public with the real problems confronting our oil sector and even providing path to solution.

However, there have been several attempts in the past to look into the operations and management of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, in order to put it back in good operational and management order.  The General Abisoye’s Report on NNPC Inquiry highlighted a good number of factors responsible for its failure to perform its roles to the nation.  The General Tajudeen Olanrewaju Panel that reviewed General Abisoye’s Report clearly came up with recommendations for government to implement.  Whatever these two reports are saying, they should be dusted and be looked into.   What is important is that NNPC is overdue for unbundling exercise with all its business units standing and operating independently.

General Buhari should call for these reports and act swiftly on their recommendations. The new government should look into NNPC’s books covering a period of 10 years.  There should be no sacred cows and probing of records and punishments should apply. The general public feeling is that there is no oil subsidy but an attempt to create a few elite or clique cornering the wealth of the nation.  During Abacha regime there was no subsidy and there were no scarcity of oil products.  What the public experienced was politically motivated strikes.

Crude oil for refined oil transaction was what was at play without subsidy payment to anybody.  With one that had no subsidy payment, the government and its agencies were involved in the importation and distribution of fuel at that time. Their system was that they would send crude and have refined and by-products in return.  And there was never case of fuel scarcity except, on political ground. The money that has been paid on subsidy so far is more than enough to repair all the four refineries and maintain them if floated as blue ships, which was the recommendation of the General Abisoye’s  and General Olanrewaju’s Reports.

Unbundling of NNPC

Even as of that time it was the role of the government and its agencies in providing adequate supply of fuel that led to setting up of the General Abisoye’s Panel of Inquiry on NNPC which the General Tajudeen Olanrewaju’s Review Committee was later set up to look into working out the modalities for the unbundling of NNPC and its subsidiaries and make recommendations for implementations.

The benefits of benefits of recommendations of these two reports cannot be overstretched because oil, which is the cash-cow of our economy, was safe or protected in the hands of the government.  So, there was no room for payment of subsidy.  Those who took up the role hitherto played by the government, therefore, who are the marketers, engaged in the importation of fuel and went away with or pocketed the profit they made without re-investing it into our oil sector especially in the areas of repairs or privatisation of oil refineries as emphasised by Reports of the panels led by the two Generals, who are still very much around. It is not too late for the General Muhammadu Buhari’s incoming government to look into getting the 140 subsidy takers, who are involved in the importation of this product, to re-invest the profit they make into our oil sector and not take it away.

Comrade Adeagbo is a rights activist living in Lagos.