NNPC’s wasteful petroleum tracking project, by Jerry Uwah

The federal government recently approved the sum of N17 billion for the setting up of an electronic device for tracking trucks hauling refined petroleum products to different parts of the federation.
The decision to sink such a colossal sum into the monitoring of refined petroleum products supplies emanates from the raging controversy over the quantity of petrol consumed in the country daily.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Nigeria’s delinquent oil behemoth now the sole importer of petrol, has no idea how much of the product is consumed daily.
Nigeria imports close to 98 per cent of the refined petroleum products it consumes as corruption and government meddlesomeness in the downstream sector of the oil industry render the federal government’s four refineries dormant.
NNPC flaunts fictitious figures about petrol imports and consumption.
These figures are simply unverifiable.
Ibe Kachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum and Maikanti Baru, the group managing director of NNPC had at different times announced widely contradicting figures on daily petrol consumption and subsidy bills.
On December 2017, NNPC announced that Nigeria consumes 28 million litres of petrol daily, while the cost of subsidy was set at N724 million per day or N261 billion per annum.
A few weeks later, Baru hiked the nation’s daily petrol consumption figure to 50 million litres.
His figure was later contradicted by Kachikwu at another event in Abuja where the minister contended that Nigeria consumes 60 million litres of petrol daily.
The unfortunate thing is that petrol consumption figure is public information while NNPC treats petrol import figures as official trade secret.
Sometime in April 2018, Femi Falana, the fire-pitting human rights lawyer kicked up the storm by asking Kachikwu under the Freedom of Information Act to furnish his law firm with documents authenticating petrol imports claimed by NNPC.
The senior advocate demanded copies of the Bills of lading and certified cargo discharge certificate issued by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) for the imported refined petroleum products consumed in Nigeria.
Kachikwu directed NNPC and DPR to supply the documents demanded by Falana.
After weeks of silence, NNPC responded through its lawyer that the Freedom of Information Act does not cover trade secrets like petrol import figures.
Nigerians lost the chance to verify NNPC’s dubious figures.
Since NNPC became the sole importer of petrol as government schemes fraudulent private sector firms out of petrol import business, the nation’s petrol consumption figures surged rather disproportionately.
No one outside NNPC believes that between December 2017 and February 2018, Nigeria’s petrol consumption suddenly surged by 32 million litres to 60 million litres per day as claimed by NNPC.
Smuggling which NNPC blames for the phenomenal rise in petrol consumption, has been with us for 30 years and would remain even after NNPC sinks the colossal sum of N17 billion into the fuel tracking project.
NNPC continuously spends billions of naira on Project Aquilla Software, a tracking device under the Petroleum Equalization Fund that monitors trucks delivering petrol outside the Lagos area where subsidy is paid to maintain a uniform pump price of petrol throughout the federation.
The software can identify owners and location of all trucks hauling petroleum products.
Ironically, that device has failed woefully in halting the diversion of fuel meant for the eastern and northern parts of the country.
Dealers still collect consignment of fuel meant for the north or east, collect the accompanying equalization subsidy and sell the consignment in Lagos or smuggle it to Benin or Togo Republic with impunity.
The N17 billion tracking device would fail just like the one on the equalization fund.
Officials of NNPC and Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) know those who smuggle fuel across Nigeria’s porous borders.
The 32 million litres of petrol allegedly smuggled daily into Benin, Togo, Ghana, Niger and Chad republics cannot be hauled into those countries in 50-litre plastic containers through bush paths.
They are driven in 33,000-litre trucks across borders manned by NCS officials.
People open the gates for the trucks to pass.
The same people would look the other way when the tracking device raises alarm about diversion of consignments of fuel.
Except someone physically sanctions operators of trucks hauling diverted consignments, the diversion would continue with impunity.
The N17 billion refined petroleum tracking project is a senseless duplication and colossal waste of scarce resources.
If that money is added to what is budgeted this year for the Second Niger Bridge, about two-third of the bridge link road would be completed.
NNPC’s lies about fuel consumption figures emanates from the controversial issue of fuel subsidy which the federal government has refused to provide for in the national budget.
Government’s studied opaqueness in the fuel subsidy issue has played into the hands of the dubious men in NNPC.
Now it is difficult to know who is more dubious between NNPC and the men in the Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria (MOMAN) and Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN) who duped Nigeria of N1.7 trillion in fuel subsidy scam.
From all indications, NNPC is more expensive as a petrol importer than MOMAN and IPMAN.
Deregulation of the downstream sector of the oil industry is the only solution to fictitious consumption figures.