Valentine’s Week: Queuing for a Full Tank, A Quick Fuel Prank, and other Quiet Interbank Intercourse
Over time, Valentine’s day celebrations have taken up an amatory-monetary transactional format chiefly between ladies and their men. In the US, total spending in the valentine economy is estimated to hit $23.9 billion, its second-highest level since 2007. Besides, each valentine celebrant is expected to spend an average of $175.4 to procure gifts and services for their love mates, the National Retail Federation (NRF) polls reported. In Nigeria, each Valentine celebrant is expected to spend N11,400, a 2021 Picodi poll revealed.
Debates on Valentine’s day rituals range from its platonic love origins to its mercantile love forms today. And at the centre of its Cupid’s arc is the core debate about which of the sexes gifts more or gains more during the Valentine season.
Unfortunately, Valentine celebrations in Nigeria, especially in cities such as Abuja and Lagos, took a new turn this week. The prevailing fuel scarcity and the ascendance of petrol to the echelon of luxury goods opened up a new discussion - the propriety of a full gallon of motor fuel in requiting love this Valentine season.
While men and women try to outdo one another in payments for Valentine’s day gifts or dinners, they unwittingly open up another platform for vigorous interbank intercourse, through their cash and card purchases. A freehand sketch of the NIBSS Point of Sale (POS) data estimates that over N23 billion Naira changed hands on POS this year’s Valentine’s day.
Queuing for a Full Tank: Different sexes, Different supermarkets
Nigerian men are beginning to demand functional gifts on Valentine’s day. Departing from acceptance of gifts like boxer shorts, perfumes, and cards, they now prefer gifts like a new set of car tyres, and in the tumultuous week of Valentine, they sought gifts of gallons of fuel to relieve them from the long, and many times, hopeless queues for fuel at the filling station.
Interestingly, the average Valentine Gift in Nigeria is worth a car’s full tank of petrol. On average, women in Nigeria spent N10,000 on valentine gifts while men spent N22,154, according to a 2019 Picodi survey.
With N10,000, one could fill up their car’s petrol tank at the official pump price of N165.
In the US women spend an average of $119 (N49,000) while men spend an average of $235 (N96,000), according to a 2022 NRF poll.
Source: Picodi
While these surveys (in Nigeria and the US) may represent more of those who bought Valentine presents in the conventional supermarkets or spent their Valentine evenings in upscale restaurants, they reveal a similar trend - Men spend twice as much as women on Valentine gifts and treats.
Yet, the gap between the amount each of the sexes spends on Valentine gifts may depend on where the men are getting their gifts and where the women are getting their gifts.
A woman could buy a tank full of petrol at N10,000 at the filling station, and a man could buy the same volume of fuel at N22,000 right in front of the filling station from those who hawk the product in jerrycans to save time on hapless queues.
So, one could get the same litre of petrol for N165 in the conventional filling station while the other could get it at N350, more than double the price at the black market.
Can we say then that women may be buying the same value of gifts as men do, only that men may be buying their gifts at different supermarkets?
Source: NRF's 2022 Valentine's Day Spending Survey in the USA, conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics
Research shows that women actually spend almost the same amount of money as men when buying Valentine gifts. While men buy one costly item for just their romantic partner, women buy less costly gifts for many people - friends, colleagues, other family members, children and their spouse. In the end, the woman might have spent almost the same amount on gifts as the man, or more.
Besides, men may be spending more than women on valentine gifts because “Men are more likely than women to shop for more than one partner, with 20.07% of men saying they will purchase a Valentine’s Day gift for more than one romantic partner, compared to only 6.36% of women”, a finder.com Valentine’s day statistics revealed.
Perhaps, in the end, between two faithful partners, a woman spends more than the man.
A Quick Fuel Prank: A Spouse’s Alibi and Subsidy’s hard Goodbye
On Valentine’s day and every other day, petroleum products in Nigeria are coloured with a lot of price and purchase pranks.
While President Muhammadu Buhari was the Chairman of the NNPC in 1977, “an official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), J Akpeyi, said nationwide shortages of petrol and kerosene “may end next year”, Daily Times reported then.
It’s obvious the fuel crisis did not end “next year”. And today, though the same Buhari government has postponed the total removal of oil subsidies till next year, it is not certain that oil subsidies will end “next year”.
Sadly, lovers too are following the cue of the government to postpone purchase of 2022 Valentine gifts for their partners till the fuel crisis is over “next year”. It is not certain whether this fuel prank worked or not.
But the fuel prank always works when Nigerian politicians want to evade responsibility for the people’s power and fuel crisis. It could be a simple trick like the perennial billion-dollar turn around maintenance costs of Nigeria’s audio refineries. It could be the untamed hyperboles of Nigeria’s daily petrol consumption figures used in calculating and sucking out subsidy payments from the Government’s meagre and borrowed funds.
In response to the bogus claims about the quantity of petrol that the country consumes in a day, The Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) investigations in 2020 revealed that Nigeria consumes 38.2 million litres of petrol per day. Yet by 2021, the NNPC claimed that petroleum consumption in Nigeria had increased from 65 million barrel per day in previous months to 93 million barrels per day in April 2021.
The NNPC deducts the total amount it purportedly paid for subsidy before remitting the remaining income to the federation account. Yet, the company calculates the subsidy deductions based on the price difference between the landing cost and the pump price multiplied by the millions of litres it purportedly supplied to Nigerians.
There’s always a case made for the robbery of the nation’s oil wealth through superfluous subsidies or the uncertain prices to be paid for imported fuels without subsidies.
The presumptuous fuel pranksters repeat their mantra even when the previous subsidy reduction still left the masses roaming the streets with empty kegs and half empty purses in search of fuel.
It’s hard for refineries to work in Nigeria even when billions are used to maintain its staff and equipments. It’s hard for the incoming modular refineries and Dangote refinery not to sell refined products based on fluctuating global prices of crude oil. And, though the Nigerian Law has asked subsidy to go, it’s hard for subsidy to say goodbye.
Maybe all these fuel pranks will be over this time “next year”.
Other Interbank Intercourse: More POS Terminals, Fewer Transactions Per POS Terminal
While lovers were busy filling tanks and playing pranks during Valentine’s week, billions of Naira were also quietly being given and received by banks, as men and women made payments for their different gift purchases through various payment platforms.
For these retail transactions, POS machines, as well as other offline payment methods like cash and USSD were mostly used.
While some countries strive to monitor the impact of festivals like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s day or Father’s day on their general trade and economy, one cannot easily track such detailed information for Nigeria as of now.
Yet, one can deduce that about N23.16 billion worth of transactions were made on POS machines on February 14, 2022. Though it is hard to determine what amount went into the Valentine’s festivities.
An analysis of data sourced from the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) showed that the annual value of POS transactions increased from N3.4 billion in 2017 to N8.5 billion in 2021. Yet, despite the effect of inflation in this nominal values, the value of transactions per POS reduced from N60,391 in 2017 to N42, 727 in 2021.
This was due to the increase in the number of POS machines from 155,462 in 2017 to 542,109 in 2021.
However, as the number of POS machines increased and spread further across the population, it led to fewer transactions per POS machine, even though the annual volume of POS transactions altogether increased from 2 million in 2017 to 3 million in 2021.
The usual POS machine had 38 transactions per day in 2017. But this reduced to 15 transactions on one POS machine per day in 2021.
With the deployment of the POS also for agency banking, the POS trend data reflects more reach of the people to financial services, and better prospects for the Nigeria to meet its financial inclusion targets.
Hopefully, there would be fuller tanks, no fuel pranks and freer interbank intercourse this time next year.