An energy consultant and senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law of the Rivers State University, Dr. Samuel Chike Dike has charted a way out of the current fuel crisis rocking the country, with a charge to the Federal Government to rise to the occasion and tackle headlong the intractable challenges facing the petroleum sector.
Dike, who spoke with The Tide in an exclusive interview in Port Harcourt identified short and long term measures to address the fuel crisis.
According to him, a combination of factors is responsible for the lingering crisis, which he listed as regulatory failure, institutional defects and attitudinal malfunctioning.
“A combination of these factors collates into what we are having today. Regulatory failure because the regulators of the petroleum sector like the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Minister of Petroleum Resources, among others have failed to efficiently discharge their duties. If you regulate it properly, fine. If you don’t regulate properly, then, the result is what we are having today,” he said.
Dike further indicated that institutions like the Ministry of Petroleum Resources and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) have equally compounded the petroleum sector woes due to poor performance, saying, “there is governance problem in the NNPC right from time, as it has been bedeviled by structural defects.”
He decried a situation where the Federal Government is involved in running the affairs of the corporation, stressing that a situation where the government appoints top management staff of the corporation, including the Minister of Petroleum Resources was counter-productive.
According to him, “NNPC should run as a commercial outfit and be left in the hands of private individuals, who will run it as a profit-oriented business and pay tax to the government.”
The energy consultant also emphasised the need for the government to restructure NNPC in such a way that it would only have oversight functions while the management of the corporation is left in the hands of private citizens.
He said the earlier the government distances itself from the management of the corporation, the better for the country, adding that the way it is presently structured, makes all the Departments of NNPC appendages of government.
The university teacher also decried a situation where the NNPC is currently saddled with the responsibility of importing petroleum products, instead of allowing independent oil marketers to do so.
Describing the situation as a sad commentary, Dike said the circumstances surrounding the current fuel scarcity in the country have left Nigerians more confused, as they no longer know what to believe, and urged both the NNPC and the marketers to tell the citizens the true position.

Donatus Ebi