By Adekunle Adekoya

Where we are now, with regards to subsidy is the end of a narrow cul-de-sac into which an articulated truck was driven and whose sole exit is now blocked by another truck which has broken down. How to get out?

While answers to that will have to be provided by the administration that succeeds the incumbent, the nation will have to endure the costs for another 18 months. In addition to that, other schemes spawned by the subsidy racket, which many people are not even talking about, will also have to continue. One of such is what the oil industry knows as “bridging”. 

For those still in the dark, let me explain a little. Before subsidy, refined products from the refineries are piped directly to fuel depots all over the country. Because we are who we are, we failed to maintain the pipelines such that many of them got ruptured from rusting and other natural damages over time.

In addition, pipeline vandalism took a life of its own as a way of earning a living by some people. These people, fellow Nigerians, continually burst pipelines and siphoned products which they sold to retailers below market price, or smuggled them out of the country and creamed off handsome yields.

As a result, the pipelines and fuel depots, operated by the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company, PPMC, a subsidiary of NNPC got disconnected from the refineries.

Since we were already importing refined products, they are offloaded into the country mainly through designated jetties, from where they were supposed to be piped to fuel depots all over the country. With ruptured and vandalised pipelines, the fuel depots were also disconnected from imported products.

ALSO READ: The subsidy cul-de-sac

Enter the fuel tankers. A former Secretary-General of NUPENG (National Union of Petroleum & Natural Gas Workers) once told me that no less than 6,000 tankers stream to Lagos daily to lift fuel from the depots that have littered and destroyed Apapa, for haulage to other parts of the country. But the tankers cannot lift fuel from Lagos, to Birnin Gwari, or Jalingo for example, for free.

That means the Birnin Gwari motorist would have to pay more than the man in Lagos. To avoid this, magicians in government devised the bridging cost, which bill is also picked up by the Federal Government. In fact, CEO of the Nigerian Midstream & Downstream Regulatory Authority, NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed disclosed last Wednesday that the FG paid a whoppingN52.7 billion to transporters (tanker drivers) as bridging claims between December 2021 and now, just two months.

That should stretch to more than N600 billion in one year. See how deeper it gets? If you add the accidents that fuel tankers cause, and how rapidly they damage roads, you will only begin to see the extent of horror that we have inflicted on ourselves. If we had done the right things at the right time, that cost would not have arisen.

We could have built at least 10 world-class hospitals with N600 billion, or equip and fund our schools such that ASUU will never have cause to strike, or tar hundreds of kilometres of roads with that money, yet we are are wasting it. The cul-de-sac get longer, darker, deeper, and danker!

Vanguard News Nigeria