This present madness in petrol pump pricing

Petroleum products prices, particularly premium motor spirit (PMS), popularly called petrol, in events currently unfolding like drama scripts being played out on arts theatre stages in the country, has become one generationally “confusing” experience that Nigerians, known for having short memories, are finding this particularly agonising development one never be forgotten easily. The drama is in the speed and the frequency of pump price adjustments, with these frightening price hikes openly done in full public glare (without fear of federal agency’s price regulatory body working under the NMDPRA), in every nook and cranny of most megacities in the country. This is indicative of one thing – indirectly, this may not be short of a prelude to fuel subsidy removal, and products’ deregulation signals of what might happen in the industry in the near future, which is now being dangled before Nigerians.

The manner in which metres of fuel dispensing pumps are adjusted is unimaginable. It has left Nigerians dumbfounded because everyone is bewildered by what is going on in the economy as this is concurrently happening alongside the CBN’s currency change, which has created scarcity of the new notes in the banks. People all over the place, scrambling in lengthy queues in banks to withdraw money from either the ATMs with cards or over the counter with cheques; end up frustrated without success.

Taking the alternative route too, by patronising the privately-owned point of sale (PoS) operators, does not help matters either. Most PoS operators have also joined the crazy bandwagon of opportunistic extortionists by charging people withdrawing cash as much as a thousand naira for every ten thousand withdrawal successfully made (instead of the normal service charge of one hundred naira per ten thousand).

A lot of families are populated with vulnerable people who cannot afford daily living. Petrol, essential as it is for driving the economy, people in dilemma, therefore, instantly and affirmatively, respond, without an option to these frequent crazy hikes in the product’s price, by also tailoring down and shrinking the volumes they pay for, in line with the metre readings, just to suit their daily budgeted amounts. This trend in product transactions (products demand and supply pricing) that is going on, is definitely unsustainable. Such confusing madness (where some are suffering and crying) may reach a breaking-point where the masses shall violently resist and push back against such evil trends.  Paucity of funds in the economy (with scarcity of naira notes in circulation), is one other critical aspect that would force every buyer of the product to stop demanding the product at outrageous amounts; which, of course, could lead to an instant collapse of the economy. Such development is likely to occur because a total halt in mobility and mass transportation of commuters shall adversely impact daily economic and commercial activities within the system.

One may begin to raise questions about what is really happening to this economy. Distractive and economically unproductive policies keep frustrating even the epileptic progress that goes on daily among micro businesses in the commercial sub-sectors of the economy. If only the amount of man-hour losses the economy incurs (through frustrating delays on endless petrol queues without success; the uncoordinated arrangements for people to seamlessly replace their hard earned old currency with the new notes) is quantified in financial terms, this would run into hundreds of millions of naira as losses, macro-economically. I stand to doubt the capacity of our economic planners and managers dishing out such policies. This singular test case is just a fraction of the numerous counterproductive policies that stagnate the progress and growth of this economy. This current petrol pricing madness is where pump prices skyrocket to as much as N1,000/litre in some parts of the country, while at the same time others/filling stations, even within the same city, discretionary sell at N285/litre, N300, N320, N370, N400, N450 per litre of petrol, and so on. One remembers that the root cause of this hiccups hinges on non local refining of our crude, and to add fire to the injury, the notorious, ignoble fuel subsidy policy that finally rendered the economy a total failure (by all economic indices)! We must not be in a hurry to forget that around September/October 2021, the turnaround maintenance of Eleme Refinery that Afreximbank Cairo lent Nigeria $1.5 billion for its refurbishment was authoritatively assured to resume operation this 2023 February. Here we are right in February 2023, low and behold, the big question that all of us must ask is, what is happening now? We seem to never be able to tell ourselves the truth! The only game changer that shall rescue the nation from the current economic quagmire is, total commitment to local refining of our God given crude oil!

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