A former Deputy Director of the defunct Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), Engineer Sunday Adebayo Babalola, has said Nigerians need to know exactly how many litres of fuel they consume daily, given the discordant figures from government officials. He said knowledge of the exact figures would not only end doubts but also important in national planning and development.
Although the Presidency had debunked the report that the Federal Government under President Bola Tinubu planslned to spend $5.4 trillion as fuel subsidy in 2024, the revelation of the accurate daily fuel consumption of the country would validate government’s position. It will also help Nigerians appreciate the management of their national wealth and resources.
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, (Oil) Heineken Lokpobiri, had, while speaking on the 25th anniversary of Nigeria’s democracy, and one year anniversary of President Bola Tinubu’s administration, said he had been told by the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC Ltd) that Nigeria’s total daily petrol consumption now hovered between 50 million litres and 60 million litres.
Lokpobiri stated that the NNPC Ltd had the statutory responsibility to step in any time things were going out of hand. His figure is at variance with that of the Chief Executive, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, who in Lagos a few months ago, during a stakeholder meeting with oil and gas downstream operators, said that Nigeria’s daily domestic consumption of petrol had significantly dropped from 66.7 million litres daily, before the removal of fuel subsidy to 44.3 million litres per day after.
He added that the figure represented about 33.58 per cent daily reduction. He said: “The current daily consumption has drastically reduced as against 65 million litres which had been the daily consumption before subsidy removal. “In January, it was 62 million litres per day; February, 62 million litres per day; March, 71.4 million litres per day; April, 67.7 million litres per day; May, 66.6 million litres per day; June, 49. 5 million litres per day and July, 46.3 million litres per day.”
Babalola, in an interview with New Telegraph over the weekend, said Nigerians should be informed of the exact fuel daily consumption of the country. He also said that government functionaries needed to clarify whether Nigeria is consuming 60 million litres per day, 44.3 million litres or whatever the accurate figure is. He said: “Nigerians need to know the exact daily consumption. Since subsidy has been removed, where there was subsidy, that was when we really needed to know. The country should know how much we are consuming. The US know how much they are consuming.
“They consumed almost 100 billion litres per day. They know? So there is no reason why we should not know. Because that will also help our planning. It is data. How is it growing? How is it going forward? What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? The data will help you. so we should know. “If private marketers are not importing fuel, and NNPC Ltd is importing, NNPC should tell us how much they are importing and how they are distributing it.
NMDPRA should be in the know with NNPC because that is also their schedule of duty to know what is going on in the downstream sector and in the midstream sector. “On whether we are consuming up to 60 million litres since some people are no longer using their vehicles and there is less usage of fuel because of its high price, consumption will likely come down. But we do not know.
Data is supposed to be factual and not theoretically so I would not be talking about it. But when they consume it, they consume it and you know how much has been consumed.” Babalola also said the disparity in the figures of the nation’s daily fuel consumptions from top government functionaries was not a novel development, adding that it had happened in the past. He stated that the minister and the NMDPRA boss should reconcile their figures.
He explained that the mechanism of gathering accurate data and even reconciling in the event of discrepancies has been enhanced by technology. He noted that some companies now file their data realtime. Babalola said: “They should sit down and reconcile. These things are statistics that are available. If your agency is something like this and you are saying another thing, it does not send a good signal to the populace. No! The populace will also think you are trying to also steal some money. So, get the statistics.
It used to happen when I was working with DPR that when DPR would release a particular figure either for production or reserves, NNPC would release another figure. What we did was to come together and agree that we must reconcile our figures properly before we roll out the figures that we give to the public. From that time, we did not even have any problem. It does happen internally even within the department. Upstream is releasing a figure, downstream is releasing a figure, you come together and just reconcile your figure.
“You make sure that you reconcile it before the meeting so that when in the meeting you are giving your figure, whatever downstream gives as its figure is what the upstream will also give as its . The difference in figures can happen because the reason why it happens is simply because upstream or NNPC may get figures later than the DPR.
It is the figure they have that they will keep using while DPR has already gotten an updated figure because at DPR we have people who daily go to collect these data as at the time I was there. “I do not know what happens now. It is even easier now because companies do send data real time now because of the internet and other technological advancement. But those days we used to send people to the company to collect them daily. I know that because it was under me.