First you have to ban the sale of fuel in jerry cans.
All the problems in the downstream sector stem from jerry cans. It does not matter that the government has refused to liberalise the downstream sector to allow for private participation when it is apparent it cannot fund 100 percent importation of fuel.
It’s the private oil marketers that are a threat; investments from depot owners may somehow leave you unclean. Institute an environment where the private sector runs for the hills, give them no breathing space.
They make the offending the jerry cans.
Also if you liberalise the sector, Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) officials may have too little to do. You run the danger of having grown men sitting idle and twiddling their fingers.
So create a phantom regulated price for people in Lagos and Abuja. They are the only states that matter. The rest are unavoidable nuisance.
Dissipate energy on summits talking about problems everyone knows the solution. Burn valuable funds refurbishing refineries that should naturally be museum pieces. Appoint a minister of state for petroleum who can quickly achieve renown in unsaying things he said.
That’s how to do everything but what actually needs to get done.
Then let the Central Bank decide by casting lots who gets foreign exchange between importers of toothpick and petrol. Create a parallel market because you want to artificially prop up the naira.
And don’t forget to go after filling stations attendants selling in jerry cans.
To be effective at this, hire tough looking Department of State Security (DSS) officials, arm them with sophisticated guns and go after filling stations selling to Nigerians bearing jerry cans. It is a matter of national security.
Prevention, detection and investigation of threat of espionage, subversion, sabotage, economic crimes of national dimension, terrorist activities and separatist agitations are too mundane to bother the DSS with.
The greatest threat to national security is people buying fuel in jerry cans.
You may even require more force. So let loose the National Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) on the jerry cans carriers.
Deplore them away from the pipelines – they are old and rotting anyway. Have them prance around filling stations with guns and beat up filling station attendants. They are part of the conspiracy – those fuel attendants.
Selling fuel in jerry cans is the greatest threat to civil order.
Now that you are armed with the combined power of the DSS and Civil Defence, lay ambush on all filling stations in the land.
This is war!
Shut filling stations that you catch selling to people bearing jerry cans. Arrest the station managers and fine them N2million.
Show the president you are serious; justify your budget allocation – this is change!
It does not matter that under your nose fraudulent operators are diverting fuel taken from Lagos meant for Sokoto and offloading it at Ibadan and then return to make claims on the equalisation fund.
This is just a racket, what is Nigeria without some silly, little racket. Besides, its only a few hundreds of thousands of litres of fuel that gets diverted, at most a miserly million, what’s that compared to all that fuel sold in 25 litre jerry cans.
Of course you want to end the scourge of black marketers, and you need righteous indignation to combat the menace.
Then in one fell swoop shut down small and medium scale businesses that depend on jerry cans to purchase fuel to run their barbing saloons, printing presses, hair saloons, restaurants, offices, welder points, tailor shops, business centres and general provision stores.
Abuja Chamber of Commerce had quantified the loss to Micro Small Medium Enterprises (MSME) to about N30 billion in thirty days but do not bat an eyelid.
They are just making noise. This is a new dawn, where reasonableness is the first casualty in policy making and doing what is impractical beats taking pragmatic actions.
It doesn’t matter that black marketers are selling in jerry cans right in front of filling stations where car owners keep vigils waiting to buy fuel.
In 2016, Nigerians come to filling stations dragging along 10KVA generators and polythene bags to buy fuel.
Progress is when you run an industry in 2016 with a model that failed in 1984. Time should cure everything – even crass ineptitude.
Listen to the president’s body language. It is close substitute for fundamental objectives and directive principles of state policy.
Issue import licenses just to bring in fuel, it’s the national product. As you give out refinery licenses, insist on dictating price based not on market trends but upon what some northern talakawa can pay.
And then go after those selling to people bearing jerry cans. Again.
When you do, ignore the fact that filling stations adjust pump prices to cheat customers or that many sell at night to evade detection.
You are the DPR, and your fundamental reason for existence is to get those selling in jerry cans.
ISAAC ANYAOGU
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