 Yeah, still the breakfast on plus TV Africa on a new year day. And we're hoping that you're having a wonderful time wherever you are. We hope that you are not going to have a hangover anyway because you went for a crossover, crossover should not give way to hangover. So this new year is looking up. We've just heard the president's speech and all that. And then we've also heard that the refinery in Potacot will start operations very, very soon. That fuel will start getting to states as soon as possible. But this disturbing headline for me, it's disturbing, is that refinery rehabilitation is not to lead to immediate petrol price crash. I don't even know what that means because if there's availability of fuel, there should be a crash. But like the last guest said, our own demand and supply laws do not, do not, they do not conform with international ones. Whatever we see in the international scene may not be what is obtainable here. But we have a guest to talk about this, Dr. Mayfoe, a political analyst, is on the show this morning. Good morning and welcome to the program, Dr. Mayfoe. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. My name is my sister. Happy new year to you. Happy new year to you. Happy new year to you. Happy new year to you. Happy new year, sir. I'm happy we made it to 2024, not all of us, but a significant number of Nigerians crossed over. That is something to cheer about. Yeah. They shouldn't get there. They shouldn't despair too much. They should know that when things get too bad, they can only get better. It's unfortunate that nobody manages in Nigeria for national development. What appears to be going on is a systematic classroom. We need the opposition party, the NLC, all of them to get up to their game and begin to check the excesses of government. That is why they exist anywhere in the world. Okay. Things are looking up. I'm tempted to talk about the speech of the president that mentioned some things, but right now we're talking about fuel or petrol or petroleum generally. They say the refinery is up and running, and a lot of this fuel will be distributed soon to states and all that, but the worrisome thing is that even after the rehabilitation, it is not a promise that the price of petrol will be slashed. I'd like to hear what your thoughts are on this. Yes. When some people speculated that the common stream of a denigrate refinery, our own local refineries, would then translate to a significant lowering of the price of fuel. They didn't share the optimism, and there are reasons for it. First and foremost, if you take it from the denigrate angle, it's a private investor, and you don't know what his ambitions are, maybe to become the world's richest man. The local economy is not really his concern. Whatever he can do to get maximally off the system he would, and that has been the threat of the denigrate agglomerate. You can see the war between the denigrate cement and the Boa cement. If the Boa is trying to bring that, denigrate cement is not letting go. They want to stay up there, and that is capitalism for you. Now, as per our own local refineries, particularly Kota Kote, Wurri, and Kaduna. Well, you see, first and foremost, we need to understand that we have accepted certain policies imposed on us by the international bodies, particularly IMF and the World Bank. They wouldn't want Nigeria to go the route we are looking at. Otherwise, the country wouldn't have been forced to accept total removal of fuel subsidy without making any preparations. What I mean is that the same reason Nigerians were forced to buy fuel for between 640 and 700, depending on where you are in the country. It's the same reason the price will not come down. What I mean is that the local refineries will have to take the good at the prevailing international market rate. So the only thing you will manage to say is the marginal cost on land that is a transportation, bringing it down to Nigeria as we have been doing over time. If you understand this, there is also another point you need to take into consideration. Don't forget that Nigerian future crude production, much of it has been sold up front. What I mean by that is that the future production means the crude we are going to produce today, tomorrow upward of many months and years to come, have actually been engaged to take some loans. What I mean is that you can't even engage so much in what you call the swap because what you produce is not sufficient to meet your international obligations. Since you have more engaged parts of your production to enable you to take some money up front or take some facilities up front. Nigerians don't know this but these are the issues that you must lead before you can arrive at something that will give you a clear picture of what is going on. What the lawyers would call community reading. You bring in so many factors to get that look at this country to be able to make sense out of it. Then do not also forget that we can't even do what Angola has done. Angola just exited the opaque. Nigeria cannot exit opaque because there is no need for it. The reason being that you can't even meet production of your opaque water. We are still grossly underproducing. Our water at the point was as high as 2.3. It was brought down to 2.1 because we were not really producing up to that and it was brought down to about 1.8. I don't know where it is at the moment. But even at that we are still not meeting that opaque water. Now remember what the NSA told us recently. He said that up to 400,000 barrels of Nigerian food is stolen. It's still stolen nearly. Now let's just say Libre aside for a moment the fact that it is the beauty of the NSA to stop it. Yeah but it's also good he told us what was going on there. What does that tell you? It's a very big cartel that is still Nigerian oil. To get Nigerian oil you have to bring your vessel into Nigerian waters. You cannot bring a vessel into Nigerian waters without approval. Nigerian Navy is there and all the maritime regulatory agencies they are there with their satellite covering Nigerian waters. And yet vessels come in and load Nigerian food illegally to sell at the black market in the international market. You see Nigerian food is called Bonnie Light has a DNA. What that means is that our oil is not like any other oil you would find. It also means that wherever you find Nigerian food you will recognize it. And it is sold in the international market. So there is a cartel of both Nigerians including Nigerians and internationally, internationally a conglomerate that demand a supply. Nigerian officials are supplying these people. And the officials should be high up there because if they are not high up there you cannot bring in a vessel that you know some of these vessels are so huge that it would take up to two weeks to fully load them and they would load with that challenge and leave Nigerian waters. What that means is that if Nigeria is producing a 2 million barriers per day a significant amount of that up to 30% perhaps 40% of that daily production goes into servicing this illegal criminal organization. And the third aspect is that Nigerian officials are involved. Evidently so because you can't enter Nigerian waters with other proofs. It's impossible. The Navy will see it. The Navy will not permit it. So if the Navy allows it it means that the Navy will go to authorization to allow the vessel. That is just a simple truth. So you can say that you are under producing not because you cannot produce enough but it's because somehow Nigerian government and authorities allow part of your daily production to go into illegal channels. It's criminal. But that is where we are. So coming back finally to what you are talking about the price of coming back. It's not likely to come back. Even if it does, it's part of the marginal. Very, very marginal. That is arguing from the point of view that the fuel is not locally produced and we are no longer imparting because when we import we have to pay for landing costs the transportation costs literally. So you can argue that. I want to ask right now we know it's just protocol refinery and dangote refinery who is a private sector but how about we introduce worry refinery, kaduna refinery if all of these refineries starts to produce are we going to see a very good drop in the price of this petroleum product? You are not likely to see because they will be sold at the prevailing international market. And I have already told you why you can't go into crude as well. Nigerian crude oil production future production in part of it is already engaged to take some facilities like loans and so on and so forth. Many Nigerians don't know this. So regardless of whether we are producing here or not even without other refineries? That is what we will produce in future has already been sold up front by the Bukhari administration. You need to investigate this. That's where you are. So the country was actually wrong in our ground by the Bukhari administration and unfortunately the terrible presidency is not very really better because they are not addressing the excesses of the Bukhari administration they are rather accentuating, escalating continuing with it. That's the tragedy. And you don't have opposition party you don't have NLC to stand in the gap for Nigerians. You don't have because it is the duty of the opposition party to raise that one. What I am saying now is both the opposition party ought to articulate show Nigerians how much has been engaged if you took a loan for example to sell Nigerian crude in advance that crude you have not even produced you have already sold, collected the money or used it as a collector to collect the loan. Where is the loan? Where are the projects? We once called for international foreign security to give us an idea of what has happened in the other end of the day. Nobody took that seriously. Rather they have returned the Melekiari as the group managing director. What does that mean? It means they are satisfied with what NFPC is doing. And in the IQ that NFPC is not a county limited company. Nigeria is still winning the place of represent. So the president has the power to reconstruct the place as he does today. So why did they return the Melekiari? If he doesn't believe that he is doing what he has done. So you can see why I am saying that Nigerians are not just to know that it was. Nobody is managing for national development. They are pandering to what the international system wants particularly the World Bank and IMF. You remember right from the days of the Melekiari. The World Bank and IMF they had assisted that Nigerians were the first of CDMOS group. So Kenwood did that. He did that without any preparation just to get into their good books. Remember as at that time his kids were still in the court. So he was trying to gain assertions from everywhere. You know he went to ECO once and became the chairman. You have raised concerns that will need to be discussed as independent topics as it is. Right now we run out of time and you have painted a picture and if I must say it is very gloomy but we just want to be hopeful for 2024. We are hoping that we are going to experience less of the pain that we experienced in 2023 in this new year. We would like to thank you for being with us. I hope that is my hope. That is my hope. But I want you to read the Bloomberg report on Nigeria. They will give you all the details. Thank you so much doctor for coming on the show this morning. Happy new year. Same here my brother. We will be talking to Dr. Laume for a public affairs analyst. He was talking about the fact that there is a possibility that even with the revamping of the refinery in the price of petrol may not come down. The fears of Nigerians are becoming a reality right now. But we will still be hopeful. This is 2024 and we refuse to be downcast by anything. Happiness is a choice like we said when we are closing last year but this year we have come again and we are staying the same thing. Let's choose to be happy this year and see what we are doing. Thank you so much for being a part of this show on the first day of the year 2024. We will meet again tomorrow. My name is Nyam Gul Agadji. My name is Rumeh Polstein. Happy new year once again and I wish you an amazing 2024. Good morning.