The prices of petroleum products have nearly doubled in Nigeria’s neighboring countries such as the Benin Republic and Niger Republic – a development linked to the removal of fuel subsidies in Nigeria. Citing sources, the BBC reported that prices of petroleum products are being sold for 700 CFA or 800 CFA in the Benin Republic — nearly double the previous price of 450 CFA.
The removal of fuel subsidy was
announced on Monday last week by President Bola Tinubu, during his inaugural
speech.
The development lends credence
to reports that a significant volume of Nigeria’s subsidized petroleum products
were being smuggled into other African countries. Petrol from Nigeria was
regularly smuggled into neighboring countries including Cameroon, Ghana, Benin
Republic, and as far as Sudan – a north African country.
A
report by DW noted that vendors in Cameroon make huge profits from illegal
sales of fuel smuggled from Nigeria. According to the report, commuters in the
West African country prefer not to buy from petrol stations as it’s cheaper to
buy from illegal vendors who sourced the products from Nigeria.
“Even when Nigerians are faced
with fuel shortage, supply is constant in Cameroon,” the report said. “Cameroon
produces its own fuel, but selling Nigerian petrol is far cheaper here.”
In Cameroon, fuel from Nigeria
sells for 350 CFA while fuel from Cameroon sells for 650 CFA in petrol stations.
Nigerian
porous land borders have enabled the smuggling of oil into other African
countries, even after the borders were closed in August 2019 by former
president Muhammadu Buhari.
The CEO of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), Mele Kyari, said in an interview
with ChannelsTV on Thursday that there is no credible data to ascertain the
daily consumption of petrol in Nigeria.
He said: “I don’t think there
is any credible data on consumption but there is credible data on evacuation
from the depots. They are very distinct.
“Every
truck that leaves every depot in this country is known – the truck driver and
the planned destination of that product. We have these numbers (referring to
trucks’ movement from depots).
“We assume that this is our
consumption but we know that it might not be our consumption. We know that
petroleum products are being smuggled out of the country.”
The NNPCL chief said there is
data on how much oil Nigeria supplies, which makes it clear that everything is
not consumed in the country.
“We know how much we supply.
There is data on this. Is all of this consumed in the country? The answer is
no. The reason is very simple. We have an arbitrage environment. For instance:
before this decision we made, fuel sells for N185 in Abuja, just across your
border there is nowhere you have prices that are lower than N500 to a liter.
“We are actually subsidizing
everybody else in West Africa. I can tell you a personal experience. I travel
to Sudan for a visit when a Nigerian met me and said: ‘Gentleman, I understand
you work for NNPC. Can you help me have access to fuel because people are
bringing fuel here to make money from it?
“That means the fuel in this
country goes as far as Sudan. For other neighboring countries around us, you
cannot even talk about it. They call it Nigerian fuel in many countries.
“None of the countries around
us imports petroleum products and you can’t do something about it because there
is an arbitrage environment that we have created. We have 4,500km of land
borders and you don’t have all the resources to man these,” he said.
Fuel subsidy, which remains one
of the most heated issues in the Nigerian polity, has gulped trillions of naira
in national budgets despite indications that most of the products being
subsidized were stolen and smuggled into other countries.
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