Dear Mr President, I want to believe you are comfortable and enjoying life wherever you are (you have been globetrotting lately). Your daily activities are definitely not hindered by the several forms of hardship most ordinary Nigerians face.

You may have forgotten now that you are in Aso rock (heaven on earth) that most houses, offices and businesses in Nigeria depend on generators for their power supply and vehicles for their movements. Those machines inevitably require fuel. Life is currently very hard for most of us. We cannot even carry out our day to day activities anymore. It is needless saying this affects the economy significantly. As the minister of petroleum, you are squarely to blame for this.

History is currently repeating itself again. Just like Ex President Obasanjo before you (he globetrotted too) who assigned to himself that same role of minister of petroleum. You may want to review Obasanjo’s performance in that ministry. After several increases in the pump price of fuel, spending billions of naira on turn around maintenance (TAM) of antiquated refineries and subsidies (funds enough to have built new modern refineries). The results were abysmal despite that he had 8 good years to have fixed the sector.

Nigeria till date still continues to rely on importation of fuel and this should not have been even for a single day. No other OPEC member imports fuel, they only export it.

Short and Long term Solutions

For short term, all that is needed to do is massively import the fuel. It is very certain it will be bought. It is cheaper now too anyway (price of crude oil has fallen drastically as you know). If some refineries output cannot meet our demands, simply find more refineries around the globe and import. There is currently too much oil in the world market. How it continues to be scarce only in Nigeria is the eighth wonder of the world.

About the logistic challenges, all the vessels do not have to berth at the Lagos ports. They could berth at other ports around the country so as to make the fuel circulate faster. And to reduce congestion at the Lagos ports, pipelines or any other medium including a vessel could be used to convey a huge volume constantly to the Atlas Cove depot and moved to Mosimi depot where tankers can load and distribute around the country.

For long term, we need more new and modern refineries with utmost urgency. There is no other way to go about this. It is only the Dangote refinery being built (that was not even actualised by your administration). That is not good enough after one year of election into office (I counted from march, 2015). The best time to have built more refineries for Nigeria is yesterday, the second best time, though late, is today. You have been meeting with officials in both public and private sectors since you were declared the winner of the election so I want to believe you hit the ground rolling. But we still have not heard till date other plans to build more modern refineries for the country let alone commencement of the design and construction. Not even issuance of licences to investors.

The four refineries in existence are obsolete from all indications and gulp far too much money. Besides, such businesses should be handed over to the private sector. Your administration should engage investors to build refineries. It is doable. If there are any issues hindering the investors, fix it for them. Just do it. All government needs to do is properly regulate and make sure citizens are not charged exorbitantly.

Team expansion

I know you made yourself the minister of petroleum because you mean very well for this country. Sadly, good intentions alone do not fix issues. Only good and pragmatic actions do.  With the current security, economic and other issues you are battling with, it is obvious you are not overseeing the affairs of the petroleum industry yourself on a day to day basis as expected of the minister of petroleum. That makes the minister of state, Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu, the de facto minister and overlord. He is trying but he can do far better. But no matter how fierce a dog is, he cannot watch over two houses at the same time (You may want to apply that to Babatunde Raji Fashola too, the Minister of power, works and housing).

Kachikwu is definitely overwhelmed. He also needs a better can-do attitude. Saying he is not a magician and thereby cannot fix our problems overnight is insensitive to our plight. He has not been there just for a night, or has he ? The petroleum industry is vast. It has up and down streams and a wide range of diverse players and stakeholders. Mr President, you need a bigger team to solve the problem of the petroleum industry. People of somewhat equal footing with Kachikwu and not subordinates who will be his yes-men, need to be in this team to freely engage and brainstorm.

Lack of Policy ?

It seems you have no concrete policy and therefore no goals to achieve in this sector (in fact, in other sectors too). If you have them, a year is enough to have them formulated and announced. Restructuring (or unbundling) of NNPC is not a prerequisite for building of refineries as that is the only major announcement we have got which may even yet be only symbolic and have no substance.

The problem (fuel scarcity) is well established and identified so I think you have at least one major goal to attain in this sector. And that is to make sure before the end of this your 4 year tenure, fuel importation will be a thing of the past in this country. And yes, 4 years is definitely more than enough to build new refineries even from the conception stage. There are more than enough financial and human resources in this country alone to do that let alone tapping from global resources. If after this tenure and we will still have to import fuel, it means you have failed Nigerians at least in that sector. You should know fully by now the multiplier effects that will have on the national economy and security. It will create employment in multiple folds and also help our foreign exchange reserves. A significant part (above 40%) of our foreign exchange goes into importing fuel.

We voted for a change from the 16 regressive years of the PDP administration. You seem to be toeing their path too. We need you to come up with concrete policies and plans (of course with a timeline) and start implementing them. That is the only way you will toe a different path. A year after your election is enough to have done that. As a popular active citizen will say “this is not a note of impatience; it is a reminder of a ticking clock”.

You do not have forever to rule us, besides we the citizens have suffered far too much and need succor as soon as possible. Thank you.

You can engage the writer on twitter via his handle @beeshaiban or email: biodunshaiban@gmail.com

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