OPEC+ approved a production increase of 188,000 barrels per day this week, and Nigeria's media celebrated like we had just discovered oil for the first time. The headlines spoke of opportunity. The business press saw growth. But the approval masks a far more uncomfortable truth: Nigeria is still producing far less oil than it should, and we have no serious plan to change that.
Let us be clear about what happened. OPEC+ decided to add slightly less than 200,000 barrels to its collective daily output. This is not a breakthrough. It is not even particularly generous. For context, Nigeria alone produced 2.3 million barrels per day in 2012. Today, we struggle to maintain 1.5 million. We have lost nearly a third of our production capacity in a decade, and when we get a modest increase approved by a cartel, we treat it like rescue.
The problem is not OPEC+. The problem is us. Nigeria's oil infrastructure has been starved of investment for years. Our refineries operate at a fraction of capacity. Crude theft continues unabated in the Niger Delta, with government estimates suggesting losses of 500,000 barrels daily to illegal bunkering. We are sitting on one of the world's largest proven reserves and we cannot extract what we have. An OPEC+ production increase is not a solution to this failure. It is merely permission to fail slightly less visibly.
Someone will argue that OPEC+ constraints protect prices, and that producing more would crash the market and hurt our revenue. This argument deserves serious consideration. When Nigeria floods the market unilaterally, crude prices do fall, and revenue per barrel drops. But the logic here is backwards. OPEC+ production caps exist because member states cannot produce what they claim they could. Saudi Arabia produces near its stated capacity. The UAE produces near its stated capacity. Nigeria does not. We use OPEC+ quotas as cover for our own incompetence, then celebrate when we are given permission to produce at slightly higher levels of incompetence.
The real question is why. Why are Nigerian oil fields underperforming? Why have we not rebuilt the refineries that used to process our own crude? Why do we still import refined petroleum while exporting raw crude? The answers involve chronic underfunding of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, decades of corruption in procurement, insecurity in oil-producing regions, and a fundamental lack of long-term strategy. These are not problems that OPEC+ can solve. They are problems only Nigeria can solve, and we have shown little appetite for doing so.
What should actually happen is straightforward. Nigeria needs a serious, costed, time-bound plan to increase production to 2.5 million barrels daily within five years. This requires investment in exploration, in production infrastructure, in security for pipelines and facilities, and in operational excellence across the sector. It requires treating oil theft as what it is: economic sabotage worthy of military-grade response. It requires appointing competent people to lead the NNPC and holding them accountable for results, not explanations.
Instead, we are celebrating an OPEC+ decision that lets us produce slightly more of the oil we are already losing to incompetence and theft. This is not policy. This is theatre.
The UAE, notably, is leaving OPEC+ after this decision. Why? Because the Emiratis have their own ambitions for production growth and they do not want to be constrained by a cartel that exists partly to protect inefficient producers like Nigeria. The UAE will increase production regardless of what OPEC+ says. Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, is managing its production carefully to maximize long-term revenue and maintain market power. Nigeria is doing neither. We are hoping the cartel will manage our problems for us.
Here is what will happen if nothing changes. Oil prices will fluctuate. Some years we will earn good revenue; other years we will struggle. But our absolute production will continue to stagnate or decline. Countries like Guyana, which just started large-scale production, will eventually produce more than we do. We will remain trapped in the middle, unable to produce like a real oil power and unwilling to invest in anything else. The youth will keep migrating. The government will keep borrowing. And every few years, a new OPEC+ decision will arrive, and our media will celebrate another modest increase as if it were national achievement.
The 188,000 barrels approved this week matter only if Nigeria actually plans to produce them. If we treat it as an excuse to do nothing, it matters not at all. The decision is made. The question now is whether we have the competence and will to use it.
OduViews represents the editorial opinion of OduNews.
