The House of Representatives Ad-hoc Committee on Fuel Consumption has embarked on a fact finding mission to ascertain the actual volume of petrol consumed daily in Nigeria and to establish level of subsidy being paid by the government.
This was revealed by Hon. Uzoma Abonta, HoR, Chairman of the Committee, who led other members of the committee on an oversight visit to tank farms in Calabar, Cross River State on Thursday.
EnergyDay’s check showed that Nigeria’s estimated daily consumption has risen from 72.07 million litres per day(lpd) in December 2021 to 93m (lpd) as of May, 2022. This is based on figured released by Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited (NNPC Ltd). This translated to an estimate of 5.902 billion litres of petroleum consumed by Nigerians in the first quarter of 2022.
Mr George Ene-Ita, Regional Coordinator, Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority,(NDPRA) South South Regional Office, who received the lawmakers during the fact-finding mission conducted them round most of the farms in Calabar, including Northwest Petroleum, Ammasco Petrochemicals Company, Mainland Oil and Gas, Alkanes, Sobaz, Ibafon and Blokks.
Hon. Abonta( Ukwa Federal Constituency of Abia state in the House of Representative) during the tour said that in view of the current debate on whether fuel subsidy should be removed or not, the House of Representatives set up the committee to ascertain the product consumption in the country.
He noted that the report of the committee will be used by the House as an indicator to perfect the issues surrounding the subsidy.
Abonta said, “We are trying to find out the volume of product being consumed in the country daily. This report will be used by the House of Representatives as an indicator to perfect other issues.
“Subsidy has become a topical issue that has bedeviled Nigeria for a long while and you cannot get or calculate subsidy without knowing the actual volume.
“At the end of the exercise, if we get it right, the House of Representative will be in a better position to direct or properly place this issue of subsidy or to do otherwise.
“From what the Nigeria Customs Service had told us about products getting into our neighbouring countries, if that is true, then it is not part of what we claim we consume,” he said.
“For now, we are on a mission to find out the volume of product been brought into the country and in doing that, we need to take a comparative and quantitative data from all the depots.
“After that, we can then analyse our consumption on a monthly or yearly basis; then we can place it side by side with the subsidy paid out.
“There has been so much controversy on the issue of subsidy; especially on who paid what, who got what and the issue of value,” the Adhoc-Committee Chairman said.
