Penultimate week in this column I raised the issue of the fuddle and the fury in the nation’s fuel supply chain and the need for Nigerians to insist on the on-going reforms in the sector as a panacea to the perennial blight of petrol scarcity. My submission elicited a surfeit of reactions; some coated in acrid rage, some mild and tempered while a majority  of respondents applauded the stance of Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, the Group Managing Director of NNPC and Minister of State for Petroleum Resources.

Though divergent and disparate in their views, one common denominator in all the responses was the fact that fuel scarcity is not new to Nigerians; they all acknowledge that there is corruption in the manner the NNPC had been managed over the years and the oil mandarins who had been profiting from the messy, sticky broth which NNPC represented in the intervening years would fight back at any person wanting to steer the oil behemoth to the path of transparency.

Some argued that the virulent attacks on the person of Kachikwu were borne of vengeful fury against a man the attackers and their sponsors perceive as standing in their way; their path of sleaze and skullduggery. It is a path that enriched a few crooked crude oil plutocrats to the detriment of the nation. This group of respondents wants Kachikwu to continue with his reforms and not kowtow to the whims of the merchants of fraud. A particular respondent, Edet Ukpong, wrote that the greater tragedy is not in the fact there was fuel crisis but the very fact that Kachikwu and his team would capitulate to the arm-twisting pressure from the cabal and abandon the reforms that has birthed investor confidence in the Nigerian oil market. He argued that even a nitwit should know that if there is shortage of any product, all you need to do is to approach the supplier of such product for more stock. This is what Kachikwu should ordinarily do. But there is danger in this simplistic option, this option of importing rather than making effort to refine crude here in Nigeria both for export and domestic consumption.

Is it not a shame that Nigeria spends a good $1.8 billion every quarter to import fuel? Fuel importation is not sustainable; it drains the nation’s forex reserve and it creates no job. It is a mere portfolio business and adds no value in the oil and gas value chain. Therefore it should be discouraged. Kachikwu wants to wean Nigeria of this unhealthy and rather toxic existence of importing fuel to bridge the gap in domestic consumption.

And is it not a cruel paradox that after well over five decades of oil exploration, Nigeria cannot boast of private refineries? Why then are a few Nigerians hitting out at a man who is working hard to ensure that private refineries come on stream. Why are a few Nigerians inexorably committed to frustrating any attempt to refine crude oil locally?

Yes, the global market may be dull today; yes, crude price may have crashed to an all-time low, but crude oil market has always see-sawed at different times. It can be volatile, almost volcanic. But it can also be stable, at least for a season. This seasonal swings present with varying degrees of outcomes. The current global market is on a bust curve. The immediate direct consequence of this is massive job cuts. We must never forget that the state of Texas alone lost about 240,000 industry jobs in the late 1980s oil bust which led to the closure of some oil wells and put a drossy veneer on the glamour and flamboyance of then oil-rich Texas billionaires. In 2016, following the steep dip of oil prices from 2015, global job losses have already surpassed 250,000. Nigeria has no immunity to this. Nigeria’s woes are worsened by a lack of capacity to domestically refine crude oil to meet local demand. This has placed enormous burden on the superintendent of the nation’s oil and gas market, the NNPC.  It is a miracle that Nigeria has not experienced the hailstorm of job losses in the oil sector commensurate with her current earnings from oil.

The matter is made worse by the colossal failure of past governments to come clean with the transactions around the all-important commodity which has remained for decades the major forex earner. Perhaps, this explains why the job of Dr. Kachikwu has been described as the most critical job in Nigeria’s public sector.

Running the NNPC at this time requires out-of-the-box strategy. It demands innovative thinking and a lot of roll-up-your-sleeve derring-do. This, I think, is what Kachikwu is doing at the moment. Aside the immediate solution of flooding the market with mostly imported fuel, he wants to get local production stabilized; he wants to persuade the oil majors, especially, to buy into his vision by letting them see the humungous gains the will make in the long run. He is adopting the principle of ‘Get Involved’.

He alluded to this recently: “The first thing that I have tried to do is, for the first time in this country, I have been able to convince the upstream companies to provide some forex buffer over the next one year for those who are bringing in products.

“Total Upstream to Total Downstream, Mobil Upstream to Mobil Downstream, Agip ENI to Oando, Shell to Conoil and things like that. It’s been very innovative, putting $200 million of forex availability out into the space. It’s taken a lot of goodwill, it’s taken a lot of work from me. The second thing we’ve done is, we’ve had to box our way through the CBN to get a little of forex allocation, because we provide the bulk of this foreign exchange, we should have a bit of it to help stabilise the situation, because fuel queue, don’t make any mistake about it, it doesn’t matter what we achieve in our transformation agenda, is the single most difficult item, which if not solved can bring down the polity and can create a mayhem here, so it is something that we have focused on”.

The logic here is that not just the CBN but oil majors have joined in making sure Nigeria has enough forex to import fuel. This is a landmark in the industry but it is for immediate solution. The end-point should be to reduce fuel importation. And in order to achieve this, NNPC has embarked on a novel initiative of leveraging existing facilities termed co-located refineries.

Kachikwu says the target is to achieve 650,000 barrels per day (bpd) refining capacity from the current 445,000 bpd from this initiative. Currently, nine companies have submitted bids for co-location of new refineries in Port-Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna. The multiplier effect of this initiative on other sectors of the economy can at best be imagined. This is far more progressive than the call by politicians to import fuel from anywhere and everywhere just to satiate the hunger of the moment.

No matter the pressure, Kachikwu must stay on the path of his reforms to win the future for Nigerians. We are confronted with fuel queues today because yesterday out leaders voraciously and mindlessly ate our tomorrow. This is a pitfall Kachikwu is striving to avoid by ensuring we make the sacrifice today to guarantee our tomorrow. The $14 billion 650,000 barrels of crude per day refining capacity Dangote Refinery is a clear attestation to the restoration of investor confidence in the sector. Such milestone should encourage Kachikwu to bear the pains of the moment.

The job of clearing the mess in the oil sector is a tough one. Somebody has got to do it. Kachikwu has stepped to the plate. He needs all the props of support not the plots to undo him.

• First published in Sunday Sun of April 17, 2016