HOUSE OF REPS FUEL SUBSIDY PROBE:
Farouk Lawan: What is Nigeria’s daily fuel consumption?
Diezani: 52million Liters
NNPC: 35m liters
DPR: 43m liters
PPPRA: 24M liters
Okonjo: 40M liters
Farouk Lawan: What was the subsidy for 2011?
Dieziani: 1.4Trillion
Okonjo: 1.3Trillion
CBN: 1.7Trillion
Farouk Lawan: Can we have the KPMG REPORT?
Okonjo: I have to go through the report first
Diezani: I have not seen the report
Farouk Lawan: What is the production capacity of our local refineries?
NNPC: 30%
PPPRA: 20%
DPR: 13%
Diezani: 15%
Farouk Lawan: Does Nigeria pay subsidy on locally refined Products?
Diezani: It depends
NNPC: The lay man cannot understand how it’s done
PPPRA: Yes
DPR: No
Farouk Lawan: Why is Kerosene still scarce?
Diezani: Because its use by the aviation industry as aviation fuel
NNPC: Because there is no subsidy so NNPC overstretched its resources
PPPRA: it’s not properly deregulated
Farouk Lawan: what is the balance in the subsidy accounts?
Diezani:It’s a virtual account
NNPC: There is no account in existence as the lay man will look at it
PPPRA: The account is a technical one
CBN: There is no account with us for subsidy
Okonjo: The account exists but not with a bank.
Introduction to Government Budgeting
The recently (and sadly) aborted subsidy strike has brought to fore how expensive (or is it wasteful) our government is – check this out:
Government is budgeting for the following:
PURCHASE OF COMPUTER & ACCESSORIES: (I). 90 HP DESKTOPS @ N300,000 = N27,000,000; (II). 20 HP PRINTERS @ N150,000 =N3,000,000; (III). 60 NOS. UPS @ N55,000 = N3,300,000; (IV). 75 NOS.HP LAPTOPS @ N314,000 = N23,550,000 AND (V). 10 NOS. SCANNERS @ N190,000 = N1,900,000.
What manner of PC are we buying at 300K a pop? And HP laptops at 314K? Are these mobile servers?
It seems I’m in the wrong business 🙁
Genome on demand
The human genome was cracked some years ago by some mad hat scientists. That adventure took about 10 years although the completed map took another 3 years to show up. Guess what, same hack would take just a week if we are doing it today.
That was in 2000. Using the same extrapolation, your genome could be hacked and analyzed (and probably backed up on a USB drive, Lord helps you if it gets virus infected) in 19 minutes by year 2022 and 2 seconds in 2032.
Actually, those figures are wrong. I think at the rate at which we are going, our genomes could be analyzed online real time in 7 years. And with human models being simulated by some smart folks, vaccine and drug development would leave the realm of the lab into pure algorithms.
Maybe we would finally conquer cancer, engineer immortality, figure out teleportation and finally do away with work. My vacation ends in 24 hours and I wonder why anyone hasn’t figured this out. Sad.
Introduction to fuel subsidy
Found the most interesting calculations about this fuel subsidy brouhaha at boso.me.uk (http://www.boso.me.uk/2012/01/arithmetic-of-fuel-subsidy-by-wale.html). Quite a read.
Subsidy Removal: Comparison of Gasoline Pump Price
Subsidy removal is the latest front burner of public discourse in Nigeria today and there is no shortage of facts to back either argument. Too bad many of these arguments ain’t backed by reality.
I have mashed data from World Bank and CIA Fact book about the average price of a liter of gasoline across different countries. The exchange rate used at the time of computation at the World Bank was N147 to a Dollar.
The table below shows the prices at the 18 cheapest locations too bad I can’t just drive there for a fill up:
| Country Name | $ 2010 | NGN 2010 | Output bbl/day |
| Venezuela | 0.02 | 3.40 | 2,375,000 |
| Iran | 0.10 | 14.33 | 4,252,000 |
| Saudi Arabia | 0.16 | 23.64 | 10,520,000 |
| Libya | 0.17 | 25.11 | 1,789,000 |
| Qatar | 0.19 | 28.07 | 1,437,000 |
| Bahrain | 0.21 | 31.02 | 46,430 |
| Turkmenistan | 0.22 | 32.50 | 202,400 |
| Kuwait | 0.23 | 33.98 | 2,450,000 |
| Oman | 0.31 | 45.80 | 867,900 |
| Algeria | 0.32 | 47.27 | 2,078,000 |
| Yemen | 0.35 | 51.70 | 258,800 |
| Brunei | 0.39 | 57.61 | 159,400 |
| Nigeria | 0.44 | 65.00 | 2,458,000 |
| United Arab Emirates | 0.47 | 69.43 | 2,813,000 |
| Egypt | 0.48 | 70.91 | 662,600 |
| Ecuador | 0.53 | 78.30 | 485,600 |
| Malaysia | 0.59 | 87.16 | 664,800 |
| Sudan | 0.62 | 91.59 | 514,300 |