Kwame Nkrumah who probably lived ahead of his time had admonished his fellow African leaders to first seek the kingdom of politics and everything else will fall in place afterwards. Our leaders who have continued to play the ostrich know that our problem is not economics but politics. The enemies of our country today are those opposed to a restructured Nigeria because they want a country the late sage, Obafemi Awolowo, likened to a fattened cow held down and milked by a few powerful people to the detriment of the rest of Nigerians. Lamido Sanusi, former CBN governor and now Emir of Kano refers to the same people as those with ‘vested interest’ benefitting from the misery of Nigerians. These are the people that have denied the country the opportunity of attaining her potentials like India, Vietnam, Malaysia and Korea which were at a period her contemporaries. These economic saboteurs are powerful and invincible according to Lamido because they install political office-holders who provide immunity and political coverage.
They have been able to sustain their hold on Nigeria because the fundamental character of the Nigerian state and the privileged governing class since oil became the major foreign exchange earner of the country is to live on rent from oil revenues which come cheap without much input from the people. For instance in 2009, the total value of fuel subsidy, according Lamido Sanusi was N291b, but the daring parasites feeding on the blood of Nigerians increased the figure to N2.7trillion by 2011. Sanusi claimed CBN investigation showed some of these powerful Nigerians received payments by merely supplying pieces of papers without supplying any fuel to claim payment from CBN. A House of Representatives probe later confirmed that about N1.7 trillion was fraudulently taken away under the guise of fuel subsidy payment by these powerful Nigerians.
Many of the economic saboteurs from the oil sector, the banking industry and those who derailed the privatization programme the World Bank predicted would generate 7m jobs were never sanctioned. That many of them have been elected by their people as governors, senators and party leaders only confirm our problem is crisis of nationality which finds expression in politics of identity. If we need a further proof that our problem is more political than economic, the recent statement credited to MaikantiBaru, Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, to the effect that no turnaround maintenance (TAM) has been undertaken on the four state-owned refineries in 42 years provides just that.
Yet we have it on record through a House of Representatives report, quoted by The Punch that TAM had gulped N264 billion in a decade. It is also on record that General Sani Abacha awarded a contract valued at $215 million in 1997 for the Kaduna refinery TAM. Abdulsalami Abubakar’s regime in 1998 also allocated $92 million for the four refineries. Obasanjo during his first term in office (1999-2003), spent about $254 million and $400.4 million. These monies seem to have been cornered by a few powerful Nigerians as the four refineries with a combined capacity of 445,000 barrels per day produce less than 9% of the nation’s consumption while the nation according to ThePunch, quoting IbeKachikwu, the minister of state for petroleum, “spent $28 billion of her foreign exchange earnings importing 92 per cent of the petrol it consumed in 2017.”
Some concerned Nigerians have recommended privatization of the four refineries while the two major labour petroleum unions have kicked against such proposal claiming it will amount ‘to selling the country’s national monuments and could more worryingly mean the transfer of the country’s oil wealth to government cronies’. The Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) and the Nigerian Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) opposed selling the refineries.
Both are missing the point. It is now obvious that APC like PDP (1999-2015), lacks the political will to make the refineries work. And if the government finally decides to put the old refineries up for sale, those who have access to state funds or enjoy state support as monopolies are probably ready to buy the them as carcass. Since they are the only set of privileged Nigerians with access to foreign exchange, they will most likely like other privatised government enterprises, show more interest in asset stripping or importation of labour of other societies. It cannot be a coincidence that out of about 39 licences for establishment of refineries issued by Obasanjo’s administration since 2002, ‘only the Niger Delta Petroleum Resources run refinery, located in Ogbelle, Rivers State has commenced production of 1,000bpd of refined oil ‘(Felix Jaro and Noma Garrick: Energy Mix Report).
The nation must come to terms with her demon – crisis of nationality. Many aggrieved ethnic groups including those of the Niger Delta region who feel short-changed by an unjust system don’t have faith in the Nigerian state. This is why between 100-400,000 barrels of crude oil are stolen daily and ferried by ship out of the country even with the presence of Navy, NIMASA and other security forces.
In fact, between Chukwuma Soludo, Obasanjo’s CBN governor and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jonathan’s Minister of Finance, there was a consensus that about $60b worth of crude oil was stolen in four years. Explaining this in a letter to the Okonjo-Iweala, Soludo had said: “First, you admit that ‘oil theft’ has reduced oil output from the average 2.3 – 2.4 million barrels per day (mpd) to 1.95mpd (meaning that at least 350,000 to 450,000 barrels per day are being ‘stolen’. On the average of 400,000 per day and the oil prices over the past four years, it comes to about $60 billion ‘stolen’ in just four years. In today’s exchange rate, that is about N12.6 trillion”.
And as late as 2016, Nigeria Natural Resource Charter (NNRC), a UK-funded non-governmental organisation (NGO) disclosed that the country lost about N3.8 trillion to crude oil theft between 2016 and 2017. The report identified poverty, unemployment, poor governance, pervasive corruption and the neglect of the Niger Delta region as major reasons for the emergence and sustenance of oil theft over time.
Who can best protect resources than the owner of resources? Texas in the US and Alberta in Canada control their oil resources and pay tax to the federal government. The most effective solution to our crisis of nationality which finds expression in the sabotage of the economy by aggrieved nationalities and their representative is restructuring. This will allow nationalities to once again take control of their destinies, as was the case when cocoa,palm oil, groundnut and cotton were the country’s major foreign earnings. If restructured zones or regions take control of the minerals or other resources in their areas and pay tax to the federal government, they will be able to judiciously deploy funds to their critical areas of need, be it taming their militants or wading off attacks by migrating herdsmen.
A dysfunctional centre mismanaging seized state resources through institution like the NNPC regarded as “the world’s most opaque state-owned oil company” cannot promote nation building. It is more likely going to lead to sabotage by aggrieved groups as we today see in NNPC, JAMB, NIMASA Navy and other federal institutions.
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