Somehow, we have made every end of year a season of agony. Instead of it to be a special kind of holiday with its religious rites, government and various stakeholders in the oil sector have mastered how to unsettle us and make our holidays as difficult as hell. This they achieved by precipitating in strikes or refusing to import products thereby making it hard to get petrol and ending up turning the whole country up side down. This is as people go around looking for petrol. As we speak, this is a season of strikes. Already the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU has asked its members to brace up for a prolonged strike.
Lecturers from. Colleges of Education are on strike too. Polytechnic teachers are preparing to go on strike. The oil marketers, on their part, are flexing their muscles preparatory to a showdown with the government over an allegedly unpaid debt. The Major Oil Marketers Association of Nigeria, MOMAN Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, DAPPMA and the Independent Petroleum Products Importers, IPPIS have collectively issued a seven-day ultimatum to the government and have threatened to use strike to shut down depots across the country.
The excuse these operators in the downstream sector gave to the public is that the government is owing them a whopping N800 billion Petroleum Equalisation Fund, PEF. Assuming that this claim of debt is found to be authentic, the timing of this ultimatum, in our opinion, is questionable. It appears to be a deliberate act designed by the operators to blackmail the government and compel them to negotiate under pressure from the consuming public instigated by the operators. The threat, if carried out, will place the government in bad light as the Christmas season approaches, with the 2019 general elections just around the corner.
As at the time that this strike was scheduled, a key stakeholder in the petroleum products marketing sector, the Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria IPMAN had opted out of the planned strike by MOMAN and others. Even with that our worry was that should they have carried out their threat, the average consumer will be in for a hard time this holiday season. It will surely expose Nigerians to another round of gruesome struggle to source petroleum products. During those periods of induced scarcity, Nigerians are usually subjected to undeserved torture as a result of the unavailability of petrol.
At such times, motorists spend endless hours on long queues waiting with uncertainty regarding the possibility of getting the product to buy at any price. Some lucky ones eventually get to buy while others go home with empty tanks or patronise the black market dealers. The government and, indeed, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) are, by this move by the oil unions, primed to look bad in the eyes of Nigerians. We are pleased that government is aware of the simmering issue in the sector and is responding accordingly by not taking the threat of strike lightly. It has also initiated moves to open up dialogue with the supposedly aggrieved parties to iron out any rough edge that may be a clog in the wheel of smooth distribution of petroleum products.
Thankfully, the reason has prevailed and depot owners also called off their schedule strike. This is not dismissing their agitation. But we just cannot continue the same thing. Yearly treating Nigerians to avoidable suffering at every Christmas when people travel a lot. There are other times they can bring their disagreement with government to the fore. It must not be in December. Especially knowing that this is mostly an aged debt which has to be renegotiated. Government on its part has to find a new way to manage these hiccups. We cannot turn out holiday season to a period of petrol scarcity, long queues for unavailable petrol and the attendant troubles like inflation and anger that follows. The problem of this debt should be resolved forthwith.
Going forward, we must find solutions to our energy crisis. It has taken too long and we know this isn’t rocket science. We must produce what we consume at home more so since we have crude oil. And the idea of owing local contractors for too long does not help either. If we don’t pay them, they too won’t have a merry Christmas.
