THE FUEL SUBSIDY ERA OF CONTRADICTIONS AND LIES

For over a week, Nigerians protested the arbitrary removal of subsidy, and the consequent hike in pump price of petrol from N65 to N141.

For days the voodoo men and women were on NTA telling the world that unless we adopted the new price Nigeria would cease to exist.

They branded those against the hike, unpatriotic, fifth columnists, delusional and crazy.

Then the House of Representatives, which earlier rejected the removal of subsidy, set up an ad hoc committee headed by Faruk Lawan, to check out the claims of the government spin doctors and match the figures. They appeared one after the other before the committee…

Finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Petroleum minister, Dezeani Allison-Madueke; Head of PPPRA, Reginald Stanley, Head of DPR, Andrew Obaje; NNPC boss, Austin Oniwon, and other lackeys.

For hours, they were asked at separate occasions, to defend the policy and breakdown the figures: fuel consumption, subsidy for 2011, the KPMG report, production capacity of refineries etc. The revelations were as contradictory just as they were startling.

For instance Okonjo-Iweala was asked why her ministry did not attend the meetings of PPPRA which supervised the distribution of over N650 Billion subsidy cash…finance ministry is a member of the board. She replied: we were never invited.

 Below is a glance as some of the startling contradictions concerning figures and state of things in that sector.

 Farouk Lawan: What is Nigeria’s daily fuel consumption?
 Allison-Madueke : 52million liters
 NNPC: 35m liters
 DPR: 43m liters
 PPPRA: 24M liters
 Okonjo-Iweala : 40M liters
 Farouk Lawan: What was the subsidy for 2011?
 Allison-Madueke : N1.4Trillion
 Okonjo-Iweala : N1.3Trillion
 CBN: N1.7Trillion
 Farouk Lawan: Can we have the KPMG REPORT?
 Okonjo-Iweala : I have to go through the report first.
 Allison-Madueke: I have not seen the report
 .
 Farouk Lawan: What is the production capacity of our local refineries?’
 NNPC: 30%
 PPPRA: 20%
 DPR: 13%
 Allison-Madueke : 15%
 Farouk Lawan: Does Nigeria pay subsidy on locally refined products?
 Allison-Madueke: It depends.
NNPC: The lay man cannot understand how it’s done.
PPPRA: Yes.
DPR: No.
Farouk Lawan: Why is kerosene still scarce?
 Allison-Madueke: Because it's used by the aviation industry as aviation fuel
 .
 NNPC: Because there is no subsidy so NNPC overstretched its resources.
 PPPRA: It’s not properly deregulated.
 Farouk Lawan: What is the balance in the subsidy accounts?
 Allison-Madueke : It’s a virtual account.
 NNPC: There is no account in existence as the lay man will look at it
 .
 PPPRA: The account is a technical one.
 CBN: There is no account with us for subsidy.
 Okonjo-Iweala : The account exists but not with a bank.