“So, why are you making Nigerians suffer? Why all these long queues? It has become a situation where we have a cartel that can grind the nation to a halt at will. When they want something, they close all the stations and refuse to sell. When they see that they have got their way, they open the stations again. Is that not what is happening today? We have been laboring under this for a long time, trying to deal with it, trying to manage a group strong enough to hold the nation to ransom.” – Ngozi Okonjo Iweala

Some of you must’ve sat in fuel queues last week, sweltering in the heat, wondering why in a nation so blessed with milk and oil, we frequently run into the issue of fuel scarcity. Here’s some basic information to making sense of it all. Let’s start by correcting this notion of ‘fuel scarcity’. The word ‘scarcity’ makes it sound like it’s an availability issue…like Nigeria runs out of oil whenever fuel scarcity occurs. However, the problem is less of oil availability and more of how the oil gets to the consumers.

The Cost of Getting From A-Z

The process through which oil gets from the shores of Nigeria to the tank of your car is where the issue of fuel scarcity sets in. Nigeria’s oil downstream sector frankly has too many cabals, that like a Russian doll, has cabals within cabals. If you’re not dealing with the Major Oil Marketers, you’re dealing with the Road Transport Owners or the Petroleum Tanker Drivers or the Union of oil workers, or some group within this group of groups.

These marketers and the other cabals take care of the process of importation till delivery of fuel at the stations, then the Government pays them enough to cover their costs plus the subsidy on price of fuel a.k.a subsidy claims. In case you’ve forgotten, Government does this to keep prices of oil products below what they would otherwise be in a free market system.

As is obviously the case when a number of cabals and a lot of money are involved in Nigeria, things hardly ever go smoothly. At some point, someone starts to complain about not getting paid. Fuel subsidy claims constitute the major reason for fuel scarcity issues, but strikes by any of these cabals can range from that to management of pensions to whatever catches their fancy. And if these cabals fight amongst themselves or with Government, we experience fuel scarcity.

The latest complaint by the Major Marketers was over a N256 billion subsidy claim yet to be paid by the Government. The fuel scarcity saga is a recurring script without an end. The Government accuses the marketers of greed and ‘unpatrotism’ and the marketers simply reply ‘kilon je patriotism?’. During these back and forth negotiations, some funny things can happen. In this ‘Fast and Furious-isque’ incident last year, the Minister of Petroleum accused the marketers of changing truck numbers to avoid tracking.

As you hustle to buy black market fuel, this game of ‘he-said-she-said’ continues till the Government eventually gives in. Most times, the government is held hostage, as Nigerians don’t particularly care how the oil comes, we just want it…meanwhile, the marketers are fine with waiting it out. This process of waiting it out leads to fuel scarcity..... to be continued in part 2... chuba ezekwesili

just greed

The problem is always the looseness in government, that's what they're taking advantage of. Government is compromised, they settle themselves and can blackmail themselves so these problems continue, if not, you cannot hold government to ransom, if they're clean of your corruption, they'll simply review the terms of business and strip you of your import license, after all some of these marketers agreed with government to either build refineries or own depots for longer storage.. The problem there is corruption and compromise on the side of government. There is no sweet way of trying to explain or give meaning to the inefficiencies of government that result in these problems