Is rising fuel pump-pricing, following the bungling of the crude-for-Naira policy, to blame for the change in the NNPC Ltd Board? Who knows? More on that presently.
Meanwhile, the transactional temper, in today’s Nigeria, is in a sickly class, all its own.
Every presidential hire is an angel to be toasted and serenaded. Every presidential fire is devil to be mocked and scorned, with suggestive tales of alleged sleaze to boot.
But don’t be deceived. While holding no brief for any fired officer, this hot-and-cold is often cynical repudiation of a hitherto flowing tap now dried up! A dried-up tap is seldom angelic to perched throats! Besides, buzzing bees must find new nectar!
That has pretty much summed up reactions to the change at NNPC Ltd.
The most significant, on the operational plane, is Mele Kyari, NNPC Ltd boss since 2019, all through its transition from a public corporation to a more commercially driven oil trading firm, yielding place to Bayo Ojulari, a Shell Nigeria veteran, with pretty much intimidating credentials.
Well, Chief Pius Akinyelure, President Bola Tinubu’s boss during their days at Mobil Nigeria, also gave way to Ahmadu Musa Kida, as new NNPC Ltd board chair.
Ethnic balancers and ace pundits are already foaming in the mouth. One — prematurely? — growled that Ojulari was yet another Yoruba from the South West — before realizing Ojulari was indeed a Yoruba northerner from Kwara!
Other Yoruba — no less clannish in their thinking — would scoff at why the President would trade Akinyelure, his “kinsman”, for Kada from Borno State.
Pray, what have all these got to do with cognate experience and job competence?But still talking “tribes”: how can Kyari (ex-NNPC), Akinyelure (ex-Mobil), Ojulari (ex-Shell) and Kada (ex-Total) belong to any tribe but oil and gas?
Still, no matter what anyone says, NNPC Ltd “original”, Kyari, made his mark since his appointment as GMD, helping to drive NNPC Ltd to its present state.
That the company has partly reclaimed three of its four comatose refineries — Port Harcourt 1 and 2, and Warri; with Kaduna still a work-in-process — is ode to grim determination to succeed, even with loud naysayers sizzling with haughty cynicism.
That doesn’t, however, mean NNPC Ltd is no longer a laggard compared to its global state-owned peers: Aramco (Saudi Arabia), Petrobras (Brazil) Petronas (Malaysia), KPC — Kuwait Petroleum Corporation — (Kuwait), etc. But under Kyari, it has made distinct progress and the prospects seem quite better.
Why the board dissolution and Kyari’s ouster, then? For starters, the man is 60 and his term may have expired. In any case, the President has the leeway to hire and fire.
But if indeed it had to do with crude-for-Naira, then it would show a government very much aware of its vulnerabilities, too perilously close to midterm!
Despite the elite lullaby of “bold and courageous” showered on the President and his team, the masses are still pretty much bewildered at the post-subsidy direction of the economy, as it concerns their welfare, nay economic survival.
Fuel pump-pricing, hitherto trending down, bought the administration some legitimacy, even if grudging, on its tough reforms.
Those reforms are driven by harsh neo-liberal methods — not to punish anyone, to be sure, but — to re-set eons of economic disequilibrium. That comes with pains.
Still, that method dots on the market’s upper crust — the investing patricians — but thinks little of the plebs that grind and grill in the market’s crucible base. It’s however convinced that having sated investor greed, benefits would trickle down to the plebs.
So far, that has not quite happened — in any case, not with thundering collapse of prices, sending the hoi polloi into sheer ecstasy! Right now, there are just the elite, from their crystal balls, telling the masses good times are coming. Sweet aroma seldom calms a hungry, rumbling tummy!
Still, the crude-for-Naira policy did open a tantalizing window, making the masses to believe again. It caused fuel pump prices, thanks to local refining, to trend down — until Dangote Petroleum Refinery (DPR) ended that fleeting paradise, with torrid news.
DPR warned that it might hike its products’ pricing — which it did — unless the Federal Government kept its end of the bargain, on the crude-for-Naira policy. Now, pricing is trending up — from mid-N800-a-litre — back to N925-a-litre at the very lowest.
If care isn’t taken, it would spiral up to over N1, 000-a-litre, the price at the earliest days of subsidy removal, which sent inflation soaring, burned the pocket and sparked anger.
Whodunnit — such that after six months of crude-for-Naira, no new deal?
If it was NNPC Ltd, it just got its comeuppance. It has a new board and management team. Both have their jobs cut out for them. They had better get cracking!
The Federal Ministry of Finance-mandated technical team of experts, chaired by Zach Adedeji, the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS) boss? DPR roused the Adedeji team to a fresh commitment. But so far, still no new deal as at the March 31 expiry of the old one.
That culpable negligence — if indeed, the fault is from there — should not go un-conked. Petrol is critical to the economy; and every administration official must know the Tinubu Presidency will float or sink, at its careful management. Petrol’s cost-push inflationary danger is all too glaring!
The market regulators, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA)? Might NMDPRA be grappling — as not a few have suggested — with the futures market?
Does Nigeria simply not produce enough to guarantee the 385, 000 barrels-a-day to feed local refiners, given that a large chunk of crude produced by NNPC Ltd is already sold or battered in advance?
Credit:The Nation