Ewolewoo!!

Unfortunately, the very idea that someone hinted that the pump  price of petrol might be dropped has engineered a flurry of debilitating fuel shortage in the system. It doesn’t matter if the crude oil price in international market is less than US$40/barrel, we must continue paying the same price because how and where our marketers import their fuel is “special”. Wayo, wayo is the name of the game.

The President obviously has good intentions by making himself the Petroleum minister, but that petroleum ministry is another ministry created from “MARS” I would tell you. The corruption there permeates the whole system. When you now combine it with NNPC, you are in for serious trouble.

NNPC is a total embodiment for corruption and unfortunately it hasn’t changed. NNPC just adapted to the new regime. Nothing has changed in that set-up.. Once you become a big time GM or top manager in NNPC you are an embodiment of how “enjoyment should be”. The structure as it were cannot make any meaningful thing work in that industry. Complicating the matters in no simple ways is the dip in crude oil prices. This dip has really made it difficult to manoeuvre in many respects.

The way NNPC is presently structured, the refineries would never work. If you like pour 1 trillion naira on the refineries tomorrow nothing would happen. What you just succeeded in doing is making some people multi-billionaires in that organization. They wouldn’t do naadaa!! The money would just go up in flames.

Now, that the oil price is low, you would expect to see more “smart explorations” with reduced cost as the driving force. But naah!! You wouldn’t see it. Let me tell you something; the Americans are improving on their ability to produce oil through the shale rock/fracking  method. They are improving on how to make the production cheaper. Initially everyone thought they would all close shop when oil price fell below $50/barrel. However, they are always improvising to produce at lower prices. They are still there trying to “align” with the new prices as it were. In our own case, it is difficult for the NNPC to do so because the system would not allow it. “Mouth don wide”. It is so o!!

The so-called petroleum marketers or importers as you might want to call them are government officials’ front men. They are linked with the ministry and the NNPC. These things are interlinked. You don’t need to go to a soothsayer to extract information about the fact that there’s a link between the continuous comatose of the refineries and the no-end importation of refined product.  There is no amount that you would drop for these guys that would cover anything. They would always tell you that they are subsidizing even as the crude oil price is forever dipping. That is the mystery of Nigerian system.

Matters are far worse now because they just can’t go to the banks and use government “links” to procure loans. They can’t use the normal government money to service us as theirs. What normally happens is that a lot of government accounts that they were using to fund the private businesses have been having issues with this “TSA wahala”. The banks couldn’t draw from government account to give them “loans” as usual. This has caused so much distractions and disruptions in the system.

This goes to explain that they are not using their money to import anything. They have been using government fund(your funds) to service us by posing it is their private money or bank loans. Na lie!!  That is the reason the fuel price can never come down.

The whole problem is caused by the difficulty in accessing government money by these guys and their banks. Like I have always said: Many of Nigerian so-called billionaires, are billionaires because of their access to government funds which is quite sad.

Buhari has entered the Lions’ den. What would he do now? Would he continuously allow them access to government funds? Or he has another strategy? Time would tell. This is really serious…Ewolewoo!!!