Coffin makers, lawyers and doctors all belong to the mold of professionals whose business thrive when calamity strikes humanity. Coffin makers make money when more people die. Naturally, they do not want people to die. But they would be bankrupt if no one dies.
Doctors swim in cash when there is an epidemic. Ironically doctors are trained to ensure that people do not get sick. But doctors would starve if sickness is eradicated.
Lawyers make money when people commit crime and need to be protected from the long arm of the law. Lawyers advocate a society free of crime. However, they would be in penury if no one commits crime.
While Coffin makers do not want people to die, doctors do not want people to be sick and lawyers would rather have a crime-free society, they all pray for their businesses to thrive. The coffin maker’s prayer is something like: “Dear God, do not let people die, but do not let my business collapse”.
Doctors pray for people to be healthy. At the same time, they request the Almighty to keep their hospitals flowing with patients (sick people). Lawyers want a peaceful society. But they pray for trouble makers and criminals to use their services. God does not answer the prayers of coffin makers, doctors and lawyers because He created man to live peacefully on earth forever.
However, with the deregulation of petrol price, Nigerian motorists and practically everyone who owns an “I-pass-my-neighbour” power generator is inadvertently saying the coffin makers’ prayer as the price of crude oil inches up in the international market.
With the discovery of a vaccine to fight COVID-19, there is hope that oil consumption would surge and push up prices.
Last week, oil price climbed laboriously to $50.70 per barrel. It is expected to climb higher. That is good news to the managers of Nigeria’s economy. But it is bad news for Nigerian motorists and owners of the estimated 64 million micro-generators that account for 60 per cent of the electric power that fires Nigeria’s economy.
That is where the coffin maker’s prayer emanates from. Nigerian motorists are convinced that Nigeria’s one-handed economy would benefit immensely from the upbeat in oil price. Even as corrupt politicians hardly pass the benefit of higher price of crude oil to the toiling masses, everyone knows that higher oil price would bring more dollars into the economy and allow imported rice, fish, chicken and even tooth picks to enter the market at reasonable prices.
However, the evil of higher crude oil price is that it would punch holes into the pockets of motorists and power generator owners.
At $50 per barrel, the landing cost of petrol must be perilously close to the current open market pump price of N162.5 per liter decreed by the federal government to placate labour leaders.
Market watchers expect landing cost of petrol to cross the N160 mark soon and compel the federal government to move the pump price to anything from N173 per litre.
The motorists’ prayer, like that of the coffin maker is something like: “Dear God, do not let crude oil price remain low, but don’t let the pump price of petrol hit the roof”.
The federal government is responsible for the dilemma of Nigerian motorists and power generator owners. Nigeria is probably the only oil exporting country in the world that does not refine crude oil even for domestic consumption.
Nigeria’s four refineries have not produced a liter of refined product in the last one year, but their thousands of workers are living like kings. Their fat salaries are more regular than the pittance paid to teachers and health workers in some states.
No one knows how long the federal government would resist the temptation to return to the fraudulent days of petrol subsidy. There are signs that the resistance is gradually collapsing.
What the federal government agreed with labour leaders two weeks ago amounts to slipping in petrol subsidy through the back door. As private importers study the scene, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is still the sole importer of petrol.
Government merely instructed NNPC to stop passing the cost of demurrage at Nigeria’s congested ports to fuel dealers. That is how government was able to placate labour leaders by reducing the open market pump price of petrol by N6.
NNPC is funding demurrage from government coffers. If private importers are to do that, government would have to reimburse them. That amounts to the return of subsidy.
That is why I called for caution in this column when Mele Kyari, NNPC’s group managing director boasted earlier in the year that he has finally ended petrol subsidy. With more than 20 million jobless people (including 2 million graduates) and 102 million citizens in abject poverty, the federal government would be courting street riots and arson, if it pushes the price of petrol to N180 per liter as market forces would soon dictate. A weird transportation system that concentrates all mode of land transports on roads, makes Nigerians very sensitive to petrol price movements.
The situation is worsened by the fact that more than 50 per cent of Nigeria’s power is generated by micro-generators running on petrol.
Those are factors the federal government would have to reckon with when weighing the options against petrol price hike. Nigeria is a peculiar market for petrol.
The Price of petrol in Nigeria is among the cheapest in the world. The average global pump price of petrol is N393.70 per liter.
In Benin Republic, Nigeria’s impoverished neighbor to the west, the pump price of petrol is a princely N355.72 per liter. Rich and highly industrialised South Africa sells a liter of petrol at N356.17. In Germany, the pump price is N562.94 per liter, while Hong Kong musters the world’s highest pump price of N874.51.
Though Nigeria remains global headquarters of poverty, Benin Republic is light years behind Nigeria in standard of living. If its citizens could buy petrol at N355.72 without the economy collapsing, there is no way petrol price of even N200 per liter could cripple Nigeria’s economy.
The problem is that people are venting their anger on government for the indecent opulent life style of its officials at a time when personnel cost and recurrent expenditure constitutes 112 per cent of government revenue.
The call for petrol subsidy borders on demand for mutual improvidence. The populace wants their own share of the endangered national cake.
