A staunch supporter of President Bola Tinubu, Joe Igbokwe, has accused the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Dangote Refinery of playing politics with Nigerians over recent dramas surrounding fuel supply.
Igbokwe lamented that the more he tried to comprehend the intrigues surrounding the controversies, the more confused he became.
He stated this in a post on his Facebook page on Tuesday, September 17.
“What is going on? Why this hide and seek? Is NNPCL trying to regulate Dangote Refinery which is not a government investment? What of government-owned four refineries in PH (Port Harcourt), Warri, and Kaduna that they have looted and grounded for years now?” he queried.
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According to him, the NNPC and NNPCL are fighting for survival having “mismanaged, looted, destroyed and plundered NNPC and NNPCL for years; they are now trying to control and regulate a private company that may have borrowed billions of hard currency to build.
“Let us stop this unnecessary debate about Dangote Refinery and NNPCL,” the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain cautioned.
He urged Tinubu to make a policy statement on the matter and put to rest all the arguments over the Dangote Refinery.
Recall that Tinubu suspended subsidy on petrol on May 29, 2023, the day he took over power, causing the pump price of a litre of the product to jump by more than 200 per cent.
Consequently, the removal inflicted hardship on Nigerians, as prices of other commodities recorded simultaneous leap while salaries of civil servants both at the Federal and state levels stagnate.
While the NNPCL subsidised the product and sold it at its outlets across the country at N617, a few Nigerians could not endure the long queues at those stations and would rather buy from independent marketers, many of who sold the product at an average of N800 per litre.
The emergence of Dangote Refinery was expected to offer hope and make the product’s price shrink, since the cost of importation would no longer be included in its price fixing.
However, that permutation failed to play out eventually.
The ICIR reports that Dangote Refinery and the NNPCL have been at loggerheads in recent weeks over issues in the petroleum sector.
The controversy started in July when the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) said it had not licensed the Dangote Refinery, even as marketers hoped to start getting petrol products from the refinery the following month amid fuel scarcity in the country.
The chief executive officer (CEO) of the NMDPRA, Farouk Ahmed, told journalists on Thursday, July 18, that the refinery was still at the pre-commissioning stage.
According to him, the refinery could engender energy insecurity and market monopoly in the country.
Ahmed also told journalists that the refinery produced inferior products compared with its imported counterparts.
Dangote Industries Limited (DIL) swiftly responded and dismissed Farouk’s allegations.
The company argued that its products were better than those imported by the NNPCL – the sole oil importer into the country.
To douse the tension created by the debacle, Tinubu intervened and directed the NNPCL to sell crude to Dangote Refinery and other upcoming refineries in the nation’s currency – the naira.
The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Publicity, Bayo Onanuga, made Tinubu’s position known in a post via his official X handle on Monday, July 29.
Onanuga said the move, which is to ensure the stability of the pump price of refined fuel and the dollar-naira exchange rate was adopted by the Federal Executive Council (FEC).
According to him, Dangote Refinery requires 15 cargoes of crude for $13.5 billion yearly, and the NNPC had committed to supply four.
With Dangote’s refinery set to debut, Nigerians hoped the price of petrol would reduce. Rather than going down, the NNPCL hiked the price a few hours before the fuel would hit fuel stations across the nation.
The NNPCL claimed it purchased the product at N897 per litre from the refinery on Sunday, September 15.
Amid the stalemate and fear of worsening hardship the hike would foist on Nigerians, the Dangote Refinery refuted the NNPCL’s claim.
Marketers have blasted Dangote Refinery for selling the fuel directly to NNPCL instead of them.
As the back-and-front argument lingers, it is gathered that the amount is higher than an average of N800 which the product is sold across the country.
With the new price, people will buy petrol in Lagos State for N950 and N1,019 in Borno State.
