By: Ibelema Jumbo

For the average Nigerian consumer of petrol, which is officially referred to as Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), the experiences of the past three weeks must have been extremely harrowing.
The scarcity of PMS, ostensibly caused by the importation of contaminated product, had resulted in long queues at many fuel retail outlets across the country with the litre price reportedly reaching from the normal N165 to as high as N400 in some states. Even more disturbing was news of the damages which the tainted import had caused to vehicles and power engines of some early buyers.
According to Mele Kyari, group managing director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPC), his firm had received a report from one of its quality inspectors on January 20 2022, indicating that there were emulsion particles in the PMS cargoes shipped to the country from Antwerp in Belgium. It was said to have been laced with about 20 per cent methanol – a prohibited substance in Nigeria’s fuel imports.
He claimed that the adulterated petrol was imported by the NNPC’s Direct Sale Direct Purchase (DSDP) suppliers, namely MRS Oil, Emadeb/Hyde/AY Maikifi/Brittania-U Consortium, Oando and Duke Oil. Explaining further, he said that under this DSDP crude-swap scheme, selected overseas refiners, international traders and Nigerian oil marketing firms were allocated petroleum quantities in exchange for the delivery of an equal value of PMS and other refined products to NNPC.
But MRS had earlier disputed this, insisting that Duke Oil was the sole importer of petroleum products into Nigeria on behalf of NNPC, its parent company; and that the dirty fuel was distributed to the various retailing companies by the oil behemoth.
Surely, one can recall that during its operation, the above products importation arrangement came with a nationally televised open-bidding system where eligible firms were selected. But that was until about three years ago when the oil-sector regulator announced that only its Duke Oil would carry on the importation of fuel into Nigeria.
This had followed the discovery of sharp practices by the licensed oil importers, leading to the shipment and distribution of poor quality products in the country. So, how come the same NNPC is the very one releasing a list of private fuel importers? Again, is it likely that Duke Oil and the other three firms fingered by Kyari may have conspired to source their supplies from the same ‘dubious’ Belgian refiner?
In fact, the latest embarrassment is what would most certainly visit any major oil-producing country with four dormant refineries but whose leaders and retired oil executives would rather build private fuel storage depots and prefer that the country continues to import petroleum products than rehabilitate the refineries for the nation’s overall benefit.
However, that is not the focus of this write-up. Instead, my concern here is that the verbal smackdown between these oil-sector giants has thrown up something very important but which, I’m afraid, might get drowned by the enduring hullabaloo. It pertains to the suspected shady establishment of Duke Oil 32 years ago during the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida.
Reports emanating from the dirty fuel brouhaha have it that, as the trading arm of NNPC, Duke Oil Company Inc was registered in Panama under the Spanish name ‘Sociedad Anonima’, which in English translates to Anonymous Society. This simply suggests that its promoters had elected to remain faceless ab initio. And let us also be reminded that this Central American country has always been notorious as a safe haven for money launderers.
It, therefore, calls to question the reason a state oil corporation like NNPC would opt to float a subsidiary firm with secret shareholders and also pick a sleazy enclave for its registration.
Until 2019, Duke Oil was said to have registered and operated an offshoot in London. Known as Duke Oil Services, the new firm has relocated to Dubai apparently to draw close to Asia which is fast becoming the main destination for Nigeria’s petroleum exports.
If indeed Duke Oil was registered with a hazy ownership structure, it then means that a few faceless individuals had, over the years, consistently withdrawn and shared among themselves profits that had accrued to the firm from its diverse lucrative transactions. And this may also explain part of why NNPC is often reported to have operated in breach of the federal government’s Treasury Single Account (TSA) framework.
Given such circumstances, therefore, would anybody still hold the opinion that Lamido Sanusi, as Central Bank governor, was crying wolf where there was none when he claimed that the sum of N20 billion was missing from the NNPC coffers?
The story of Nigeria’s oil and gas industry is replete with sordid tales of local players and their expatriate collaborators perpetually devising schemes to rip the nation off through bogus companies and shady contracts. Recent examples include the Process & Industrial Development (P&ID) case for which an overseas court ordered the Nigeria government to pay an accumulated sum of $9.6 billion in 2017 over a failed gas development contract. Nigeria has since appealed the judgment while insisting that the entire contract was a scam.
We surely could not have forgotten the OPL 245 saga popularly tagged the Malabu Oil scandal involving Shell and ENI’s transfer of $1.1 billion through the federal government to some accounts controlled by a former Petroleum Minister, Dan Etete.
Or need I remind us of the shadowy Mexican syndicate of suspected international fraudsters which reportedly insisted on being paid for exposing the alleged collusion of some Nigerian top officials with foreigners to sell 48 million barrels of crude oil already shipped out of the country?
May God save this nation.