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Social Democratic Party (SDP) presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has asked the federal government to invest massively in public transportation as a way out of the current petroleum crisis in the nation.
Adebayo also advised the federal government to treat fuel supply and energy as national security, the same way the United States of America, Russia and the United Kingdom do.
The international lawyer, who frowned at the current fuel scarcity amid a price hike in Nigeria, said the government’s primary responsibility is to ensure petrol is available and reliably delivered to the nearest pump, using market rules or policy tools.
The former SDP candidate said, “We need to invest in public transportation. Nigeria has not reached a level where every man and woman would have to have a car.
“We can set up plants, where whether in partnership with people in Brazil or in Asia, by the time you produce 50,000, 100,000 public buses that are on CNG, some of them could even be on electric.
“But there must be a national programme that is devoted to that, that is not political in nature, or not palliative in nature, especially at campaign season.
“By that, we reduce petroleum consumption by 75% in the life of one administration,” he said.
On the nation’s refineries, he said, “The next question we should be asking is what happens to the four refineries owned by the public, three of which have been undergoing turn around maintenance for years, since I was a young boy.
“It may be possible that Port Harcourt or Warri refineries may even have more prospect of coming on stream before any other private comes on stream to have.
“The energy mix should be done in such a way that the fortune of the whole country is not dependent on what a private entity does.
“The only role of the government is to make its policy stable so that many players can come into the sector”.
On how government can strike a balance in trying to have more vehicular movement on CNG in order to reduce the pressure on petroleum, Adebayo responded thus, “If you look at our national gas policy and implement it, liquefied natural gas, compressed gas and all kind of ways by which we can utilise gas, they are all there.
“What government needs to do is to create a gas market that has incentive. To have converters put on cars which they have been mouthing for a long time. You can first clearly make it an automotive policy that every vehicle you want to have in Nigeria must be capable of using both petroleum and gas alternately.
“If you go to Kenya, Tanzania and many places, even Ghana they have it. Even in Nigeria, we have it at microscopic level. You can have these plants that will generate employment. But you still have to supply the gas and all these gas fields that we have, the pipelines, sometimes are shut down, but if we take care of that sector effectively.
“We can use CNG and have a three-year plan where we have at least 50% of construction of CNG. That will reduce the cost of reliance on petroleum”, he stressed.
Speaking on Dangote refinery, Adebayo said, “The problem of our politics is that we are equating an industry with a firm. Dangote is one refinery out of many. The fortune of a country cannot rest with one company unless you are doing pre bendanlism or you are doing chronic capitalism.
“If you are doing proper economic planning , the refinery that Dangote is bringing will just be one of the things you are adding to your energy supply chain. Even if the refinery was working, I am not even sure it’s completed yet, but assuming it is working, it will still give you logistical requirements because the refinery is at the corner of Lagos, so you still have to get it to Sokoto, Zamfara, Benue, Mubi (in Adamawa State) and wherever.
“So, the problems we have with logistics and transportation in the country, the absence of rail line and all of that, will still impact on it. So, the way I will look at it, as a policy leader, is to give as much encouragement to a Dangote refinery, but not peculiar to him.
“To make a general rule for the entire industry of fashioning a policy and programme to fit into a particular company, but make a general rule to support the establishment of refineries in Nigeria, using clearly laid down policies that anybody who wants to go into that industry will have equal rights like any other person.
“I will not politicise a private company’s business because what we must run away from in Nigeria is that you must not privatise the profit and socialise the loss, meaning, the core centres are given to the tax payers and the profit is given to private player.”
The SDP presidential candidate insisted that all efforts must be made to ensure that the nation’s refineries are working.
“You also need to make sure that the refineries are not dead woods. They are not just core centres that are not performing. You need to make sure that the turn around maintenance is done and the racket created around it where every government comes and spends money on it must come to an end”, he said.
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