Nigerian billionaire, Femi Otedola, has revealed a heated confrontation with former President Olusegun Obasanjo over the deregulation of diesel importation in 2004. According to Otedola’s memoir, “Making It Big: Lessons from a Life in Business,” Obasanjo was furious when he discovered that diesel scarcity had hit the country following deregulation.
Otedola, who owned Zenon Petroleum at the time, had convinced Obasanjo that the private sector could meet Nigeria’s diesel demand without the involvement of NNPC. However, when diesel scarcity ensued, Obasanjo’s critics blamed Otedola, telling the president that the market had been turned upside down.
As Otedola recounted, “When President Obasanjo deregulated diesel in 2004, Zenon took an unassailable lead in the market. “My opponents’ reaction was to tell the president that we’d turned the market upside down and that the economy was about to be brought down because there was no diesel, and Obasanjo was mad at me because he’d sought and received assurances from us that NNPC’s exit from diesel importation wouldn’t affect supply.
“My critics then fanned the flames by telling him there was no diesel in the country, that trucks couldn’t move and that industries were shutting down.”
Otedola revealed that Obasanjo called him at 2 am, shouting through the phone.
“You’re a stupid boy! God will punish you! You persuaded me to deregulate diesel, and now there’s no diesel in the country!”
When Otedola met with Obasanjo the following day, the president flew into a rage again.
“What kind of rubbish is this? What kind of nonsense is this?” He was right in my face, screaming at the top of his lungs.
Otedola explained the situation to Obasanjo, saying,
“Baba, they’re lying to you. It’s all lies. I have six ships waiting to discharge big supplies of diesel.” He added that he was paying demurrage fees due to delays in offloading his shipments. “I was even paying demurrage. I told the president that I was the victim of competitors’ backbiting,” he wrote.
To prove his point, Otedola proposed that they advertise the availability and price of diesel on the front pages of national newspapers. “I knew it was people in NNPC ; the state monopoly, in their now teetering positions of power, who were against deregulation who’d been telling him these lies. They wanted to continue to import, and rake in the subsidy money.”
Otedola praised Obasanjo, saying, “Obasanjo was a determined and robust president. Jealous people did not easily sway him. Once he made up his mind that someone was trustworthy and genuine, as he seemed to do about me that day, he stopped listening to the naysayers.”
The deregulation of the diesel market in 2004 made it the first petroleum product to be fully free of subsidy, ending the associated rent culture.
