Kachikwu, get your act together

Statements made in recent weeks by the Minister of State for Petroleum and Group Managing Director [GMD] of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC] Dr Ibe Kachikwu have worsened the fuel crisis currently bedeviling the country, instead of alleviating it. Laden with ambiguity, lacking in clarity and bereft of visible action, the petroleum minister’s statements […]

Statements made in recent weeks by the Minister of State for Petroleum and Group Managing Director [GMD] of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation [NNPC] Dr Ibe Kachikwu have worsened the fuel crisis currently bedeviling the country, instead of alleviating it. Laden with ambiguity, lacking in clarity and bereft of visible action, the petroleum minister’s statements have left Nigerians more confused about the availability of petrol and about government’s real policy in the petroleum industry’s downstream sector.
Two issues that came up in the last two weeks aggravated the fuel crisis.  First was an indication that fuel subsidy payment would be resumed for the first time since government said it was no longer paying it. This was soon followed by fears that the price of petroleum products could be increased in the near future. At a meeting with Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) officials early last week, the minister gave a deadline of April 7, 2016 for ending fuel queues.
Dr Kachikwu was quoted as saying, “The reality is that in the first three months of the price modulation, our recovery basically enabled us to save quite a lot of money and that is going to fund the gap that we see in April. But for May, obviously, the prices would have to be adjusted to mark the current trends. Our proprietary positions are for two different concerns. As Petroleum Minister, my goal is to make sure that the price of crude oil continues to climb but as NNPC GMD, our goal is to ensure that people buy products at cheaper price. They do not go together somehow. So most times, I try to balance the curve.  Hopefully by tomorrow, Thursday, the fuel queues in Abuja should be over. Hopefully, the same thing should happen in Lagos and thereafter, by the weekend, we should see same in Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, Port Harcourt and a few other states.”
Not only did fuel queues not disappear in any of those cities by weekend, they actually lengthened. As at yesterday, long queues that blocked vehicles’ right of way persisted at many petrol filling stations in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to belie the minister’s promise that the queues would disappear last Thursday. There were reports in the media that not many ships were offloading petroleum products at the seaport in Lagos, an indication that the minister did not say the whole truth about when fuel scarcity would end.
It was also a pointer to the likelihood that Kachikwu’s earlier statement on March 22, 2016, in which he said fuel scarcity could persist till May, could be the true position of things.  Even though he scrambled and denied the statement due to the uproar it caused, it looks like he spoke the truth at the time. In the last few months, there have been a string of contradictory claims and counter claims coming from the same minister with respect to sale of refineries; subsidy removal; review of fuel prices; unbundling of NNPC; restructuring of NNPC and availability of petroleum products. As things stand, government’s position on any of these issues is far from clear at this time.
We sympathise with Dr. Ibe Kachikwu because he is not the senior Minister of Petroleum, though he is the government’s public face and fall guy with respect to oil matters. We advise him to refrain from making statements about matters that have not been well thought-out or that have not been agreed upon by government and its organs. Statements made under pressure, only to later be modified, withdrawn or otherwise obfuscated, serve to worsen the deep hole we are in with respect to fuel product supply and the oil industry as a whole.