Dangote/NNPCL feud: Technology of cooperating with one’s enemies

It is no longer news to Nigerians that Nigeria’s challenges are complicated and multidimensional. The decision of President Bola Tinubu to take a well-deserved three-week vacation, therefore, could not have come as a surprise to many. The hydra-headed burdens of this country have devised several strategies for wearing people out, and fast, too. I wish our President a restoration of divine energy and strength during this leave.

Meanwhile, before BAT settles down to his working leave (have you ever seen a Nigerian President going on ‘real’ vacation?) at his London bus stop, there is a need for him to take a deeper look at the frosty relationship between Dangote Refinery, an untamed monopoly of a sort, and the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation Limited. The ambush rivalry between these two, with the active connivance of parasitic petrol marketers, has been responsible for the skyrocketing fuel prices that have continued to move furiously like strong wind upon the Atlantic.

The stormy relationship between the powerful refinery and the apex national oil agency dated back to the commencement of operations by the Lagos-based refiners. NNPCL, under the leadership of Mele Kyari, had agreed to buy a 20 per cent stake in the refinery during construction during the (now late) Major Gen Muhammadu Buhari’s regime.

The regulator, which had failed to fix any of its four refineries in over 20 years, paid only eight per cent of the planned investment in the private refinery, according to the President, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, when the refinery was finally set to commence operations in 2024. Insiders in NNPCL, however, said Dangote’s public announcement of the stake paid for by the national apex oil regulator marked the beginning of the cat-and-mouse relationship between the refinery and NNPCL.

Tinubu’s masterstroke, directing the sale of crude oil to Dangote Refinery (especially) in Naira, instead of in dollars, ensured initial stability in the fuel industry in Nigeria up until early this year. The honeymoon, however, appears to be over between the refinery and the NNPCL due to some factors mostly informed by corporate ego and self-serving motives, despite the refinery eventually conceding the initial 20 per cent stake investment demanded by the NNPCL.

The confidence in the current NNPCL Group Managing Director, Mr Bayo Ojulari, to stabilise the stormy relationship between the two agencies has not only waned but collapsed, ostensibly owing to the pressure of fuel marketers who had never hidden their preference for the importation of fuel, no matter how substandard and illogical. They had expressed fears that Dangote Refinery would sooner or later emerge as a cruel monopolist, clearly aligning with the pull-him-down economic deductions of the International Monetary Fund.

Is it not gratifying enough to know that the IMF loans happened to be the first to be repaid in full by the Tinubu administration? This has set Nigeria partially free from taking the death pills of the international creditor. For some who might not know, there is no country in the world where the IMF has a foothold and a thriving economy- none!

If you know one, I’m ready to learn.

In spite of the Federal Government’s assurances that the IMF loans had been settled, the Fund still released a jaundiced report about Nigeria’s economy, urging the continuous importation of petroleum produced to avert creating a monopoly. It’s not that the IMF is unaware that every litre of fuel imported into Nigeria keeps the economy of the source of importation alive and running.

The Fund is equally aware that a few refineries in Europe have shut down partly due to the coming on stream of the Lagos-based refiners. Only fuel marketers in Nigeria claim not to know that the IMF is more of undertakers for developing economies than a saviour. It makes no pretence about it with its strangulating conditions for granting loans aimed at making struggling nations permanently subservient to and dependent on the economies of the founders of the global financial organisation. Yet, it never ceases to interfere in weak nations’ economies, gulping an overdose of pain reliever for the nations’ headache.

If you had been one of the ‘fortunate’ Nigerians sourcing foreign exchange (for whatever purpose) between 2021 and 2024, you would have appreciated the significant impact the sufficient local refining of Nigeria’s crude has had on the forex market. In the better-forgotten days, there were endless queues of parents, vendors, and manufacturers for months, lobbying (some actually cut corners) just to get the almighty dollars to meet their forex needs. At one point, your Naira Mastercard could only fetch you $20/month, when the transaction wasn’t blocked by the way.

The local refining of crude and the wise decision of the Federal Government to sell crude in local currency, much to the disappointment of foreign undertakers and their willing local collaborators, have positively helped the Naira to make significant gains. No longer does one wait hopelessly on banks’ list, after bankers would have feasted on each allocation, before sourcing forex. This turnaround didn’t come cheap, nor was it a happenstance.

In a circumstance akin to deliverance, seasonal and out-of-season petrol scarcity has disappeared, just like a dream. With the subsidy gone, I pay heavily to fuel my vehicles and run my small-scale food processing business. How could I have forgotten situations where I would have queued for hours at filling stations, and with just a car ahead of me to get to the much-admired dispensing pump, a bribe-loving, hungry-looking attendant would make the much-dreaded announcement, “fuel don finish”, unruffled, carrying a patently smelly mouth.

On the nation’s way to seeming stability, Dangote Refinery and NNPCL (acting in cahoots with vampiric marketers) are engaged in a silent war of attrition that would do the nation no good, except the marketers and their political godfathers who benefited heavily in the subsidy-empowered rot of the past. Somebody just joked (it sounded like a threat) recently that he would restore the debilitating fuel subsidy regime. If someone had hugely benefited from such a fraudulent arrangement, knowing the previous administrations borrowed to fund the greed of a few criminals, one should not be surprised to hear such a perilous idea from such an opportunist.

This has taken me to my main concern. Just a week ago, there were reports that Dangote had ‘threatened’ to focus more on exporting its products (which is more profitable to it) than prioritising local consumption as fuel importation had continued to climb, courtesy of the NNPCL and its leeching marketers.

Clearly, somebody ‘dey do us’! If ‘person no do us’, why is it difficult for someone in Tinubu’s office (which has supported local refineries) to understand that increasing importation of petroleum products is tantamount to weaponising the enemies against Nigeria’s interests? Increasing fuel imports will definitely undermine our much-vaunted foreign reserves, said to be growing, while the stability of the naira against the dollar is clearly in jeopardy.

You would notice that I have not fingered NNPCL in this war against Nigeria’s interest, since it is the actual weapon fashioned against the nation. Marketers cannot import petroleum products if the regulatory agency does not issue them licences to do so.

Granted that Dangote refinery’s pricing had been dancing ‘yoyo’ since the beginning of the illogical war in Iran, shouldn’t the interest of the much-traumatised Nigerians be the main concern of the NNPCL in this senseless battle? When do two wrongs start making a right, except in mathematics?

When the refinery had a problem with the national oil giant last year on the naira-for-crude arrangement, Tinubu, who was aware that the principalities, who never wanted the refinery to take off at all, were behind the disagreement, intervened before such a sensitive national situation snowballed into a crisis. Has such a channel been shut?

What would have prevented an Ojulari from reporting a Dangote to the Presidency for adjudication instead of deciding to collaborate with those who never wished us well to wage a war of stagnation against the nation? Are we to begin to suspect that the IMF has finally succeeded in its plot to resuscitate dying refineries in Europe and Asia which had remained dry for long through our front, all-comers’ door? Who joins bandits to set his or her own house on fire?

I do not want to believe that the surge in fuel importation into Nigeria is part of NNPCL’s deliberate plans to keep afloat some controversial refineries in foreign land, suspected to belong to a few Nigerians which have joined the long list of crude plants said to be under serious threat of untimely death. I do not have anything against their investments, but their operations should not be at the expense of the nation on which they have feasted for too long.

It is also important for Dangote Refinery to consider the interest of the nation where it operates before unreasonably jerking up prices (including when crude oil prices fall in the international market) like someone playing ludo. The management of the oil firm should remember that without the intentional support of the current administration, and left to the whims and caprices of the forces that revolted against it initially, the refinery might have remained comatose.

By Ademola Oni