Indigenous insurance companies have alleged that the country loses about N45 billion annually due to the preference given to foreign ship owners and their choice of insurers over the indigenous companies in the lifting and importation of fuel.
They further alleged that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, deliberately sidelined insurance companies from participating in the insurance of imported fuel both locally and internationally.
According to them, the NNPC sets unnecessary bulwarks that made it impossible for Nigerian insurance companies to participate in the insurance of imported oil business, thus shortchanging Nigeria as the country loses as much as N3.7 billion monthly in freight insurance that it should be earning. This is happening despite the existence of the Cabotage law in Nigeria.
Last year, Mr. Fola Daniel, Commissioner for Insurance, said that the National Insurance Commission (NAICOM) would not permit risks to be underwritten offshore unless local capacity has been exhausted. Daniel also said the Nigerian Oil and Gas Content Development Act 2010 desired that local insurers and re-insurers will be able to write a minimum of 45 per cent of oil risks in 2007, and 70 per cent at the end of last year, but lamented that only 33 per cent of the risks in the sector was retained locally.
He attributed the development to what he called absence of an enabling law in the past to back up the policy initiatives, adding that with the coming into effect of the Local Content Act, in accordance with Insurance Act 2003 and the National Insurance Act 1997, and the release of the guidelines for oil and gas business in Nigeria, 100 per cent, 70 per cent and 40 per cent of all life, non-life and marine insurance risks in the Nigerian oil and gas industry must be placed with insurers in Nigeria.
According to Daniel: “No risk can be placed off-shore without the written approval of the Commission, which is required to ensure that Nigerian local capacity has been fully exhausted.”
When Financial Vanguard contacted the NNPC spokesperson, Mr Levi Ajuonumah, for comments, he denied the allegation, saying that all the vessels coming into the country were insured but refused to divulge if they were locally or internationally insured.
An insurance expert who prefers to be anonymous said that all these notwithstanding; the insurance industry has been shortchanged all along. According to him, the industry was shortchanged when the exact quantity of petrol on which subsidy was being charged were not known as there were no verifiable records of importation into the country.
The industry was also shortchanged when the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, refused to divulge its volume of imports and was said not to have paid any duty to the Federal Government on imported petrol since 2002 owing to a presidential waiver. Prior to 2002, the corporation allegedly owed the Nigeria Customs Service over N46 billion as accrued duty on petrol.
The insurance industry was shortchanged yet again when mother vessels berthed off-shore to discharge products instead of going to designated ports and while on the high seas, the vessels discharged products into smaller vessels for onward delivery to the ports and because Customs personnel were barred from examining offshore vessels, they could not determine the exact quantity of products the vessels brought into the country.
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