Who Won the U.S. Presidential Debate?

I think what is basically playing out here is like two friends quarrelling over a pot of soup. You have a government that has been overly protective of Dangote but now feels he (Dangote) should play by the books, and then the man feels the government does not want to protect his $20bn investment in a country where others are stealing and taking the money away. Well, I believe that every government should be protective of its local industries. But at the same time, those industries should not be overly protected to the detriment of the smaller players. If the government is waking up now, kudos to them. We don’t want to create a monopoly. The government is not saying that they don’t want to protect Dangote, but they are saying the terms of business should not be the one that will create a monopoly. I have had the course to weigh the two and I asked, why is the government saying Dangote is creating a monopoly? In my research as a consultant to the energy sector, I know that no government would ever put its energy security in the hands of one man or one company. They try to create a balance. Unfortunately, Nigerian society is one with a herd mentality, where we like to support persons we feel are being deprived by the government because the government has consistently punished all of us. The same people who accused Dangote months ago of benefitting from the forex bazaar when the former CBN Governor, Godwin Emefiele, was arrested, are the same people today shouting about the government trying to kill Dangote’s business because the tables have turned. Same way, if Dangote’s refinery is unable to produce PMS in the shortest possible time, the same people will call for his head.

Today, the people feel the regulators want to kill a local investment like Dangote Refinery. The government has said it doesn’t want to kill it. What it wants to do is to ensure that the same way we have Dangote, it also wants to have other people who have invested trillions of naira in the downstream sector, like members of the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association of Nigeria and IPMAN. These are distributors and marketers, they are depot owners, and they should also survive alongside Dangote. If you put all of them under Dangote, that means you are putting your energy security in the hands of one man. What if the man wakes up one day and says I don’t have to give?

But the depot owners and the marketers said they are ready to buy fuel from Dangote

(Cuts in) So what’s stopping them from buying from him? Is it the Federal Government that is dictating to them to stop buying from Dangote? No! In June, for example, they (depot owners) met with Dangote, saying that it would be cheaper for them to buy products from Dangote refinery, but the business model has to be competitive. The concerns raised were worries about his business model which is to sell fuels directly through the gantry which can load 3,000 trucks per day and also cut vessel loading for local consumption which will automatically also cut off vessel supplies to deports in places like Koko, Oghara, Lagos, Port Harcourt, Calabar and other locations. They also complained about a price disparity of $50 per metric tonne between local marketers and foreign traders as the foreign traders get the product cheaper than what is offered to the local companies. Another area was having to open LCC as they were buying from Dangote in dollars. What is the rationale for selling diesel in dollars to local companies in Nigeria, since they claimed that NNPCL was already selling to them in naira? It means there would still be pressure on the naira as local marketers would still have to source for forex to buy from him. Unfortunately, the complaints were never addressed, rather NMDPRA directed all marketers to source products from Dangote which the marketers resisted until the same NMDPRA reversed the directive.

I also want to ask, in the absence of pipelines, can we eliminate vessel transportation of AGO from the refinery to depots? If you are trucking all products, you would require 606 trucks to carry 15,000 metric tonnes of diesel from the Dangote refinery to Port Harcourt or Calabar, something you can ordinarily transport with a light vessel.

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