By Olusegun Adeniyi:
The tenure of Prof. Maurice Iwu was due
to expire on 13 June, 2010. But as acting president who was riding a
crest of popular opinion, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan knew he would score
another big point if he sacked then Independent National Electoral
Commission (INEC) Chairman. Despite the fact that the law did not
expressly grant the president—a position Jonathan had not even legally
occupied at that period–such powers, he went ahead to remove Iwu on 28
April 2010 through the subterfuge of a “terminal leave”, just about six
weeks to the end of his tenure.
Of course, as to be expected, Jonathan
was hailed for the move by many Nigerians, including the current
promoters of the All Progressive Congress (APC) presidential candidate,
Major General Muhammadu Buhari. And when Jonathan appointed Prof.
Attahiru Jega as Iwu’s replacement, his popularity went a notch higher
at a time all the ills in Nigeria were credited to one imaginary
“cabal”.
However, in the run-up to the 2015
presidential election which promises to be more competitive than the
ones previously held in this Fourth Republic, some people within the
administration feel that the use of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and
Card Readers by INEC would not give them any “elbow room” to nudge fate
in the right direction in the course of the election. And because of
that, a stupendous amount of money is being expended in running a media
campaign against the INEC chairman and all the adverts bear the PDP logo
and photograph of the president.
Ordinarily, I am one of those who
believed the president when he said he would not remove Jega having
considered the wider national security implications of tinkering with
INEC on the eve of an election that has put the nation on edge. But
there is also a lesson to the civil society. Whatever may have been the
failings of Iwu as INEC Chairman, process also matters. By approving,
and even hailing, Iwu’s removal through illegal means, a dangerous
precedent had already been created but thank God that the president
appreciates (as he said in his Aljazeera interview on Monday) that
removing the current INEC chairman for no just cause and at this period
would put the elections in jeopardy.
Instructively, against the background
that the President usually touts credible elections as his major
contribution to our democracy and has always used the name of Jega to
buttress his point, what is going on in our country today resembles the
story in James Hardley Chase novel, “My Laugh Comes Last”. In that
particular offering, a wealthy bank president had asked a young man
versed in the intricacies of electronic security to build for him the
“safest bank in the world”. He got his wish but the bragging rights of
having the “safest bank in the world” also came with the realization
that he had built something impregnable even beyond his own
machinations.
Apparently taking the mandate from
President Jonathan seriously, it would seem that Jega has put in place
anti-rigging measures that go beyond the Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs)
and Card Readers. I got to know that through two programmes I have had
to attend in the last one week, one in Uyo, the other in Abuja. Last
Saturday, Patrick Okigbo’s “Nextier Advisory” organized its Development
Discourse session in Abuja titled “2015 Elections: D-Day and the Morning
After”. The discussions centred around public concerns on the readiness
of INEC for the polls and the preparedness of the Police to forestall
any election-related violence. The discussants included Professor
Mohammed Kuna (Special Adviser to Jega), Mr. Innocent Chukwuma (West
Africa Representative, Ford Foundation) and myself. But the star of the
day was Kuna who revealed many things that most Nigerians may not be
aware of.
According to Kuna, a number of security
features have been introduced such that the rescheduled 2015 elections
would be very difficult to rig. For instance, the ballot papers and
ballot boxes have been colour coded by State, Local Government Areas,
and Polling Units. As a result of the colour codes, ballot documents or
boxes that are for particular polling units cannot be used at any other
polling units. Also, there is only one result sheet for each polling
unit and any destruction of the result sheet nullifies the votes from
the polling unit. Any errors or mistakes in registering the results must
be counter-signed (like a bank document) by all the authorised parties.
Interested readers will find Kuna’s view in the communiqué on http://www.nextierlimited.com/publication/.
Also last Thursday, I was in Uyo to
speak at a two-day workshop on ‘the Media and the 2015 General Election’
organized by Vibram Nigeria Limited in collaboration with the Akwa Ibom
State chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ). Among other
speakers were State Director, Department of State Services (DSS), Mr.
Tom Minti, the State Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mr. Gabriel Achong
and the Resident Electoral Commissioner, Mr. Austin Okojie. In his
presentation, Okojie revealed that INEC has created “FORM EC 40G series
to ensure that cancelled elections and where elections were not held are
recorded for accountability” while engaging “lecturers of tertiary
institutions as collation and returning officers in order to insulate
the Commission staff against any underhand practices.”
Given all the measures being introduced,
Okojie said, he is “confident that we (INEC) will conduct elections
that will reflect the will of the Nigeria people.” That also happens to
be Jega’s pledge. And since the president has assured Nigerians that he
never harboured any plan to remove the INEC Chairman, the unhealthy
campaign for or against Jega should stop.
Fuelling troubles for President Jonathan
It was with rapt attention that
President Goodluck Jonathan listened to the briefing by Mr Godwin
Emefiele on why the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) had to unify the
foreign exchange markets by scrapping the bi-weekly Retail Dutch Auction
System. With graphic details about how some marketers were
round-tripping the dollars purchased from CBN, the apex bank governor
explained why if nothing was done, Nigeria’s foreign reserve could soon
be depleted. An ominous report from Standard & Poor’s, the
international credit-rating agency, which Emefiele showed the president
buttressed his position. By the new measure then being proposed, the
Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) would no longer
enjoy any special dispensation on Forex which the marketers would have
to source from the interbank foreign exchange market.
While the president did not discourage
the CBN from going ahead with the policy, he nonetheless made one
comment that has turned out to be prescient: “I hope this measure will
not disrupt fuel supply, especially at this crucial period.” Whatever
assurances Emefiele may have given to the president, by not taking into
confidence the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which
accounts for 50 percent of national fuel need (and often takes
responsibility for the entire 100 percent as supplier of last resort in
times of crisis) before announcing the measure, CBN was taking a gamble.
Not surprisingly, the moment the decision was made public, virtually
all the independent marketers decided to close shop. That is the
beginning of the fuel scarcity that Nigerians now experience but that is
just part of the story.
Last Thursday in Lagos, Emefiele held a
crucial meeting with fuel marketers and managing directors of banks,
following threats by the bankers that they would no longer finance fuel
importation because of accumulated debts. Although the Coordinating
Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala had assured the
marketers a few weeks ago that the N264 billion owed them would be paid,
the commitment had not been met. But the real problem, according to
insiders, was not so much that the payment had not been made but that a
letter was believed to have been written by Okonjo-Iweala to the PPPRA,
asking the agency to stop payment on foreign exchange differentials and
interest on “delayed payment” (payment exceeding 45 days after supply).
With the bankers adamant that they would
no longer fund fuel importation because they were already experiencing
liquidity problems, the CBN Governor last Thursday pleaded with them to
reconsider their stance, mindful of the political sensitivity of the
period we are in. Many of the bank CEOs who spoke said they were already
having difficulty with their boards because of lending to upstream, mid
stream and downstream sectors of the oil and gas industry and that they
funded both the Shell and Chevron divestments. They also reminded
Emefiele that he himself warned only recently that they were getting too
exposed to over-borrowings from the sector. But as an insider told me,
the marketers, acting in collusion with the banks, thought they could
use this election period to pressure the federal government into paying
all their arrears at once.
At the end, the bankers gave a condition
under which they would continue to fund fuel importation: Emefiele
would have to persuade Okonjo-Iweala to direct the Debt Management
Office (DMO) to issue the requisite Sovereign Debt Note (SDN) and that
the federal government must liquidate the existing subsidy debt.
Apparently in line with that agreement, Okonjo-Iweala on Monday released
N59 billion to the marketers through the PPPRA but that can only
provide a temporary reprieve.
However, Okonjo-Iweala confirmed on
Tuesday that the Federal Government had reached an agreement with the
marketers on the N185 billion balance of their payment. “As part of this
agreement, we are paying not only the costs they’ve incurred and their
fees but also interest and Forex differentials”, she said, adding that
the DMO has issued SDNs to cover N100 billion out of the N185 billion
agreed upon as balance for the next payments while the CBN “has also
given approvals for the banks to issue letters of credit.” Okonjo-Iweala
further explained that the scarcity is being fuelled by “a mix of
factors including disruption of pipelines and logistical issues and they
are being attended to urgently”.
While I am aware that all the critical
stakeholders in the sector are working hard to ensure that the fuel
queues disappear, it could not have been pleasing to the president that
the scarcity has come at a period he is seeking re-election. But it is a
shame that some people within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)
campaign structure would politicise the issue by blackmailing the
marketers just as it is lazy of the opposition All Progressive Congress
(APC) to mouth some ill-digested reasons for the scarcity. The real
challenge today is not availability of PMS, given the prompt
intervention by the NNPC, but how to deliver the product to every corner
of Nigeria on a sustainable basis.
As at Tuesday, the NNPC had in its
stock, 676,651,000 (676 million) litres of fuel which is enough to last
Nigeria about 17 days while another 1,097,077,392.92 (one trillion)
litres is expected to arrive within the next few days, thus pushing the
stock to 1,773,728,392.92 litres. Against the background that the total
national need for the period until March 31 is 1,160,000,000 (1.16
billion) litres, that means there would be a surplus that could last the
country until late April at a national consumption rate of 40 million
litres per day.
In my column of last week “On The Trail of Oil Thieves” ,
I explained the problem that has led to a situation in which 1212
trucks are put on the dilapidated roads in our country on a daily basis
just for us to have fuel. It is all the more unfortunate when one
realises that the idea of having several depots across the country was
so that no truck should travel beyond a radius of 250 Kilometres to
discharge fuel. And despite that the depots are in good condition,
practically all of them have been rendered redundant because of the
activities of pipelines vandals and oil thieves.
To understand the waste within the
system, here is how the pipelines delivery of fuel should work. From the
Atlas Cove in Lagos, fuel is pumped to Mosimi which then branches into
Ore and Ibadan and terminates at Ilorin. That accounts for the
South-West axis where between N600 to N700 million is lost on a weekly
basis to vandals who either insert valves with which they connect to
tankers or scoop the fuel in their canoes laden with drums. Because of
the several breaking points, pressure is usually low in the process of
pumping but detecting the actual place takes time and repairing such
damages even longer periods. Yet as bad as that situation may seem, the
situation is worse in other parts of the country, perhaps because of the
distance.
From the Warri depot, fuel is pumped to
Benin and from there to Suleja which then discharges into Kaduna. From
Kaduna, fuel is pumped to Kano, Jos and Gusau. It is from Jos that Gombe
is served and from there to Maiduguri which is the northern terminal.
Also from Port Harcourt, fuel is pumped to Aba and from there to Enugu
which serves Makurdi that in turn discharges to Yola. The combined
storage for these 21 depots is 2.6 billion litres and that is excluding
the depots owned by private individuals. But the vandals have made fuel
supply through the pipelines a risky enterprise and for that reason, the
biggest economy in Africa relies on trucking for its fuel need in the
21st century.
With the situation of things in our
country today, as I explained last week, fuel scarcity will be with us
for a long time and we may also not be able to develop the refining
capacity to meet national need, except we tackle the issue of pipelines
vandalisation. In my earlier column titled “Petrol and the Looming
Catastrophe” on 17 January 2013, following an explosion at Arepo Village
in Ogun State caused by pipelines vandals many of whom lost their
lives, I engaged this same problem and below is an excerpts from what I
wrote back then:
“With 5,120 kilometres of pipelines
network, 2,965 kilometres of sea-lines, 112 flow stations, 16 gas
plants, 126 production platforms, 17 loading buoys, 13 export terminals,
21 petroleum products depots, nine LPG Depots and 14 pump stations,
Nigeria has a huge oil and gas assets but these assets are also perhaps
the most unsecured in the world. That explains why we now have a
situation in which almost everyone believes he could help himself with
what belongs to all of us without consequences.
“Pipelines vandalism has indeed become
such a lucrative and organized criminal enterprise that in its Christmas
edition last year (2012), PUNCH carried a story of how a young medical
practitioner abandoned his stethoscope to act as middleman for vandals.
‘People started calling me ‘oil doctor’ because I always had ready
buyers for all kinds of petroleum products. Oil business is very
lucrative especially in Kogi State where as many as 17 trucks of
petroleum products could be siphoned and sold in one night,’ the medical
doctor turned pipelines vandal said.
“Yet this is something that has been
going on for far too long. For instance, a March 4, 2010 working paper
by then NNPC Group Managing Director, Mr Mohammed Barkindo, is quite
revealing. Looking at the number of incidences and the costs incurred on
losses and repairs of petroleum products pipelines over a period of ten
years (between 2000 and 2009), Barkindo painted a picture of a sector
in serious crisis.
“According to his figures, within that
ten year period in Port Harcourt, there were 199 fire incidences, 7,961
cases of pipeline vandalism and 144 ruptures, the total cost of which
amounted to N78.15 billion. In Warri, there were 95 fire incidences,
3,181 cases of vandalism and 78 ruptures, the total cost of which was
N20.39 billion. In Mosimi, there were 69 fire incidences, 2,320 cases of
vandalism and 120 ruptures, putting the total cost at N78.15 billion.
In Kaduna, there were 33 fire incidences, 817 cases of vandalism and 51
ruptures, totalling N1.6 billion in financial cost.
“In Gombe, there were 22 fire
incidences, 1406 cases of vandalism and 5 ruptures, with the cost put at
N690 million. In all for the five pipelines highlighted, within a
period of a decade, there were 418 fire incidences, 15,685 cases of
vandalism and 398 ruptures. The total cost for that ten years was
N174.57 billion.
“Even if we use today’s value, that is
more than a billion dollars stolen or wasted. Yet as grim as that may
seem, the situation is actually worse today given the latest statistics
on breaks and ruptures where year 2010 recorded the highest number in
history followed by 2011 and 2012 in descending order which is at least
good news. According to a November 2011 PPMC data, financial losses
incurred between 2006 and July 2011 to pipelines vandals are as follows:
N69,764,197,815 for PMS; N7,556,346,473 for DPK; N9,970,210,900 for AGO
and N169,869,483,266 for crude. The total: N257,160,238,454. We are
talking of almost two million dollars for a period of just five and a
half years. How can a nation continue to waste its resources like this?
“But the impact of the activities of
these criminal gangs goes beyond the value of products being stolen and
the money spent on expensive repairs, litigation and remediation costs.
The real problems are that they force refineries to operate below their
installed capacities; encourage high level of trucking thus putting more
pressure on our roads (aside causing several accidents); they ignite
fire incidences that have claimed several lives, including innocent
bystanders and also cause environmental pollution.
“Against the background that pipelines are vital security assets of
any nation, in most countries, tampering with them is almost akin to
treason. But we are yet to come to terms with this critical challenge
and for that reason, criminals are having a field day at our collective
expense as a nation…”
What the foregoing reveals quite clearly
is that the protection of pipelines–without which there will always be
fuel scarcity in many parts of our country–has become a serious national
security issue. I know many commentators have talked glibly about
building local refineries but the fact being ignored is that even if the
Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) is passed today, reform efforts within
the sector which would include building refineries as well as stable
electricity in the power sector would remain a mirage until we
effectively confront the challenge of effectively manning our pipelines.
I am aware that the timing of this
current fuel scarcity is most inauspicious but perhaps it is just as
well. If President Jonathan is re-elected, this should be another
wake-up call that he has to find a lasting solution to the problem that
would not just go away. And if the winner happens to be Major General
Muhammadu Buhari (rtd), then I extend to him my sympathy, given the
burden of expectations that would come with such victory and the
enormity of the challenge he would inherit in the sector.
- This Piece was written by Olusegun Adeniyi/Thisday
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