Oil marketers are sabotaging the system. This man means well but I think we Nigerians are a bit impatient. It's good to always form a habit of demanding for facts before making any conclusions.

The oil marketers decided not to supply PMS because they wanted Government to meet three ridiculous demands :

1. Price increase
2. Total deregulation of petroleum products
3. Payment of outstanding subsidy
If Government met these demands, can you imagine the hardship Nigerians will have to endure?
The Fed Government gave their alternative offer which is :
1. Creation of special window for Forex from CBN
2. Presentation of request for payment of outstanding subsidy to National Assembly
3. Creating opportunity for the establishment of modular refineries
4. No return to era of fuel subsidy

Its their adamant stand on Government meeting their demands while rejecting the alternative offer from Government that led to the scarcity.

In the former regime these oil marketers were the ones importing most of these PMS. So it was easy to inflate invoices and all. That's why they wanted full deregulation in the first place in order for them to determine both price and output. That's something like full scale collusive oligopoly they were seeking to achieve. However, this regime had to make NNPC to import 99.9% of the product and sell it to the marketers. Due to limited storage capacity, NNPC can store only 50% of this imports, major oil players store like 30% while the marketers store 15%. Government have been giving them soft landings like creating special windows for sourcing FX at CBN rate etc, yet these guys are still complaining of low profit margin.

Everyone knows Buhari's stance on subsidy before he became president. But that's just because he underestimated the powers of these marketers. He got there and met a flawed structure and as much as he will like to wave a magic wand, these problems takes years to solve. Before this scarcity, this regime was paying around 26 naira per liter and our daily average consumption was around 30 to 35 million liters.

Within a month when this scarcity was about to begin, consumption rose to 80 million liters, simultaneously with demands for increase in subsidy. Stop for a moment and think about this. A country normally consuming averagely 30 to 35 million liters of PMS daily suddenly had its consumption risen to 80 million in less than a month. Doesn't this smell funny to any discerning mind? Now that they have forced the government to pay 40 naira per liter (from 26 litre) and also accepting the new consumption level, it means we will be paying these marketers 3.2 billion (assuming full deregulation) every day. This is more than the monthly allocation of some states. Is that not economic wastage in epic proportion?

Most of the President's pressure on Kachikwu has been based on the actualization of the promised refineries come 2019 in order to rid the system of these corrupt intermediaries holding the country to ransom at will. We are bleeding at all ends economically due to a grossly flawed structure.

It is true that it is this administration's duty to fix it and I also blame them for some wrong economic decisions in the past too. But these were honest mistakes of rookies that were filled with irrational exuberance and passion to repair a broken system.

Some problems have short term solutions, some just don't. These are dilemmas similar to choosing between a rock and a hard place. It is somewhat ridiculous to expect a party to deliver in two and half years what another could not do in sixteen years. That notwithstanding does not mean we should wait that long for them to deliver.

However, when dealing with structural problems, you don't just wave a magic wand. It's comprehensive and systematic steps that gets them solved. Nigerians should be totally sure this administration is not doing the right thing (irrespective of the slow speed of progress) before throwing them into the abyss of condemnation.

#GodblessNigeria