By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde
The Problem
"A lawmaker," reported Vanguard newspaper on 10 March 2016, "Mr Setonji David, on Sunday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to adopt measures to stop the alleged diversion of petrol to neighbouring countries through the Seme border in Lagos."
"According to him", continued the paper, "residents of Badagry have noticed daily movement of tanker fully loaded with petrol moving into the Republic of Benin."
Thank you Mr. David for reporting from that angle of the country. I am sure Nigerians at other border towns around the country have been witnessing the same criminal activities even at these hard times when Nigerians are paying for petrol through their noses - where they are lucky to find it. Diversion of fuel to black market stations is also rampant in country.
Diversion of petroleum products has been going on unabated for decades and it will continue unless something other than the ordinary that will check the practice is devised. As vessels download fuel ordered by the NNPC to solve the present acute shortage of the product, diversion will now intensify, if we will draw from the benefit of hindsight what always happened in the past when scarcity of the product reaches a tipping point. Surely, this will frustrate the efforts of government and intensify our suffering.
Let us not forget that diversion of petroleum products to neighboring countries is among the chief reasons for the present scarcity. It is one of the reasons why Federal Government refused independent marketers foreign exchange at official rates. For this reason, the NNPC has conclusively become the sole importer of our fuel - until the policy is changed, when independent marketers will stop, or be stopped from, diverting fuel to neighbouring countries. But this policy, patriotic as it sounds, has caused scarcity of the product in the country. It is not good for us, if it can be avoided. We must learn to rely on the market, not on the government, if business must run smoothly. Government should only learn how to regulate business effectively by employing solutions like the one we are proposing below.
Solution
Happily, there is a solution - a simple and effective technology - the tracker device. Let the DPR, if it is serious, direct that every tanker that will henceforth engage in the business of lifting petroleum products in the country be equipped with a chip, as we do to our luxury cars, that will enable the tracking of the vehicle until it offloads at its destination. This must be made an obligation, not optional, for every transporter in the sector, of NNPC and of independent marketers alike.
The monitoring department of DPR can open an internet portal where it will monitor, 24/7, the movement of petroleum products in compliance with their schedules. Before any tanker is loaded with the product, the working condition of its tracker must be certified as good. Then after it is loaded, the details of its waybill and number of tracker is entered into a national DPR database that will be captured immediately at the headquarters, regional office and the originating depot. Any diversion can instantly be detected and the driver can be apprehended immediately. After the product is duly certified as discharged at its destination, the monitoring unit is notified, the delivery is checked as done and the tracking is terminated.
This simple solution will not attract any cost to the government except for designing and managing the portal which even clerks of the IT department of DPR or its mother body - the NNPC - can handle. The transporters will install the trackers themselves, I repeat, as a condition for their engagement.
My only fear is that people are always apprehensive of surveillance technology because it is a very effective means of blocking them. Bankers in the mid-1990s, who were used to operating analogue banking that enabled them flout banking regulations undetected, complained bitterly about the then newly introduced online control mechanism. A manager friend of mine opted to resign because the regulation was too tight for him. He would earn only his salary, and that was not enough to cater for his way of life.
Let us also remember that metering was a major bone of contention in the upstream sector. Oil companies in Nigeria have been operating without it for decades and they seriously resisted it when the Nuhu Ribadu committee suggested its enforcement. They want to continue with the practice where they voluntarily declare to the NNPC whatever they wish to declare of the quantity of crude they mine daily. I am not sure if the issue is resolved to date.
Sanctions
This Buhari administration needs to be very firm on this. Otherwise, the present biting scarcity will linger even if 100 vessels are offloaded at the ports.
I am always very harsh when it comes to handling officials that flout regulations and bring avoidable hardships to people or undermine the system under which they are working. I would not hesitate for a minute to dismiss any number of DPR staff - from the Director down to the clerk - that are found wanting in this respect. A jail term must also follow, after their successful prosecution by EFCC. Once fuel is loaded, no excuse must be entertained as to why it did not reach its destination.
Any defaulting transporter must refund the fuel, not the cash, and be deregistered by the DPR - and jailed. The station to which the product was diverted must also be deregistered along with all its other branches throughout the country. Such filling stations and the tankers must be confiscated by the government. Finally, directors of the company owning the defaulting stations will not be allowed to engage in any business in the petroleum sector for the rest of their lives.
Very harsh ko? They deserve it. Yesterday, I bought a litre of petrol at N300! In Gombe and Adamawa states, it costs N500. Enough is enough.
Unless a transporter has agreed to abide by these conditions in writing, he must not be allowed to lift petroleum products in the country, including those distributed by independent marketers.
Conclusion
We must intensify our employment of state of the art technologies. Without the card reader, I doubt if the President would be where he is today.
As a celebration of that contribution of technology, let the President direct DPR to give tracking technology the chance and see the wonders it will perform. Once it is perfected, government can resume providing forex to independent marketers for importation of the product as the fear of diversion is completely done away with.
The President can then sit back and relax, as petrol will be available everywhere, everyday and anytime in Nigeria. The residents of Badagry and indeed other citizens would have nothing to report except good will and best wishes.
12 April, 2016
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Postscript:
The second comment below has hinted that DPR has since February said that it is working on the tracker idea. You see! That is the problem. If it is willing, it will not take a month to see it through. But it is the will that is lacking and the government is surprisingly not pushfull enough to make the staff of the DPR to do it. Very sad.
One of my staff also just told me that Dangote has done it on his vehicles. Yes it was swift, because it is a private property. But government officials hardly take public trust so seriously. They must be pushed. I just wonder why they are left to behave as they wish even under this government, wallahi.
Allah ya sauwake.
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