The federal government is deeply troubled by Nigeria’s abysmally low consumption of cooking gas. Nigeria sits on Africa’s largest reserve of natural gas but its per capita consumption of cooking gas stands at an abysmally low rate of 2.6kg per annum.The irony is that Nigeria flares gas worth N350 billion annually in its oil fields, while most of its compatriots fell trees in search of firewood for cooking. The federal government is worried by that development because it inadvertently accelerates the Sahara Desert’s catastrophic journey to the Atlantic Ocean. In other words, the uninhibited felling of trees for cooking fuel worsens de-forestation and gets the Sahara Desert moving faster to the Atlantic Ocean.
In 2015 the government was so worried about the alarming rate of de-forestation engendered by felling of trees for firewood that Ibe Kachikwu, as group managing director of the then Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), promised a “cooking gas revolution” that would drive firewood and kerosene out of Nigerian kitchens. oven gas cooker
Kachikwu’s cooking gas revolution was designed to flood Nigerian kitchens with free gas cookers and cylinders. The revolution was to start in urban Nigeria and was to reach the rural communities by 2017.
Unfortunately, nine years after the grandiose promise by the man who later became minister of state for petroleum, not one gas cooker or cylinder has been delivered to any Nigerian. The cooking gas revolution turned out to be one of Kachikwu’s long list of failed promises. Since he was eased out of office in 2019, no one has talked about the gas revolution and its bountiful perquisites.
During the endless wait, one troubling factor compelled consumers to move in the direction that Kachikwu’s failed cooking gas revolution wanted to take them. It was the surging price of kerosene. Even as filthy and inefficient as it is, kerosene price spiraled out of control. Nigerians discovered that gas was not just a clean cooking fuel but was cheaper and more efficient than kerosene.
Many made excruciating sacrifices to re-tool their kitchens and switched to cooking gas. That required an investment in the range of N30,000 as the cheapest 12.5kg gas cylinder sold for N20, 000, while a modest gas cooker could cost as much as N10, 000.
The surge in kerosene pump price compelled many households to grudgingly switch to gas and inadvertently pushed Nigeria’s annual gas consumption from an abysmal rate of 750,000kg per annum to 1.2 million.
Gas dealers lamented last week that the consumption rate has plummeted to 700, 000kg per annum. This time it is not the high cost of cylinders and gas cookers that drove gas out of Nigerian kitchens. It is the cost of cooking gas itself. Even with the pump price of kerosene at N1,000 per litre, the price of cooking gas has reduced the surge in the pump price of kerosene to something inconsequential.
Last week the cost of filling the 12.5kg cylinder was N15, 000 at some retail outlets. Since Nigeria shamelessly imports 60 per cent of its cooking gas with a persistently depreciating local currency, consumers had ignorantly blamed the naira’s disorderly retreat in the foreign exchange market for the escalating price of cooking gas. To the utter dismay of everyone, the Nigerian Association of Liquefied Petroleum Gas Marketers last week opened a rather incredible angle in the cooking gas price milieu.
The association told the Senate that the invisible hand of a profiteering cabal among terminal operators was responsible for the escalating price of cooking gas. The cabal hoards gas and hike prices capriciously.
The marketers contend that the cabal buys 20 metric tons of cooking gas from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) at N9 million and sell to them at N16.8 million.
They warned that if the federal government fails to intervene and nip the excesses of the cabal in the bud, the 12.5kg cylinder of cooking gas would be filled at N20, 000 during the end of year festivities which is just six weeks away.
Members of the senate committee that attended to the distressed gas marketers were sufficiently shocked at the level of cataclysmic profiteering by the cabal. They thanked the marketers for daring to expose the cabal and promised to work on the tip off. The senate may not have the powers to order the cabal out of Nigeria’s way to improved cooking gas consumption.
It is the NNPCL that has the direct mandate to clip the wings of the profiteering cabal currently tormenting Nigerians at a time when the removal of petrol subsidy and the evil men sabotaging the exchange rate unification process have combined to bring unprecedented hardship on Nigeria’s inconsequential majority.
The federal government should order NNPCL to remove the evil cabal profiteering on cooking gas price out of consumers’ path. If there are no laws on which they should be tried for the catastrophic profiteering, they should be barred from dealing in the product.
The federal government’s dependence on the invisible hands of the market forces of demand and supply for the fixing of prices has brought excruciating pains on hapless consumers as heartless manufacturers and retailers take profiteering to unacceptable proportions.
Frozen fish retailers have been on strike for several days in a desperate bid to compel merciless importers to curtail profiteering and charge reasonable prices. The importers are unyielding because no one controls them. A carton of frozen fish sells for N38, 000, up from N10, 000 last year.
Dangote Cement which controls more than 70 per cent of Nigeria’s cement market produces cement at N1, 500 per 50kg bag and sells at N5, 200. No one has lifted a finger in protest even as competitors in the industry complain that Dangote makes 300 per cent profit margin from his merciless grip on Nigerian cement consumers. With food inflation standing menacingly above 30 per cent, the federal government must check the excesses of the profiteering cabal tormenting innocent cooking gas consumers.
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