The Nation Newspaper

Category: Sam Omatseye

  • Obaseki breaks Benin calabash

    Obaseki breaks Benin calabash

    The video is riveting. I had never imagined a vision of a dancing Oba of Benin. But here he was, in his full royal apparel, splendour and grandeur, swaying from side to side. Within his orbit, his white robe adorned with a semi-circle of beads around his neck, he stepped right and left, his hands upraised and came down in rhythm to a song from courtiers’ lips that filled the royal chamber with awe and majesty. The song, translated for me by a Benin friend and former classmate, was: Serene, serene May calm reign In the Oba’s domain Serene, serene. And well, he should. The palace had just received two coronation stools stolen at an infamous hour of the Benin Empire.

     The stools were for the coronations of two kings, Oba Eresoyen and Oba Esigie. The reigning king, Omo N’Oba N’Edo, Uku Akpolokpolo, Oba Ewuare II, was inhaling a proud draught for the kingdom. But not everyone in Edo State is happy. Not least the governor of the state, Godwin Obaseki.

     He has not congratulated the palace.

    He even carried it so far that he wanted to pit his party against the throne. Even after members of the APC, including its guber candidate, Monday Okpebholo, has issued a hearty congratulations, he has kept mum. It took a while before Asue Ighodalo, PDP counterpart, did. It is seen as an afterthought. It is more of a reflection of the atavistic malice that Obaseki bears against the throne.

     He is reminding everyone in the state that he is an Obaseki, and he would work against the stature of the palace.

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    His forbears were on the side of the foreigners when the British invaded in 1897. It was an Obaseki, who conspired with them and served as a warrant chief for the interlopers of the kingdom. He still carries that age-long pain in his lineage. That bad blood is the reason he wants to cut the royal kingdom into parts and asks the parts to become equal to the Oba of Benin.

    He is even backing renegade Enigies who are like dukes. And Dukes are no kings. He wants to dress them in Obaseki’s robes. He is enlisting an “army” against the throne because he is a governor. It is puny force. His party has been complicit in it, and I want to know what Ighodalo will say for himself when the campaigns heat up. Will he deny Obaseki during the campaigns, or will he deny the palace. To be or not to be, to echo Shakespeare. He is a governor trying to become a bandit against the throne. He is divvying up the kingdom, so the allocation that should go to the king will now be divided among the dukedoms. He is trying to suffocate the monarch by hitting the pocketbooks. But he is an inelegant man. He can not even acknowledge the good fortune of the palace. Rather, he wanted the stools to come to him. He set up a museum by breaking away part of the iconic Central Hospital in Benin to house the artefacts.

    This is against the wish of the palace.

    The palace wants it at the Oba Akenzua II Cultural Centre located across the palace. Is that not befitting? A cultural centre to house an icon of history. But Obaseki has turned it into a motor park.

    Obaseki has broken the royal calabash. Hence, I say he is a gubernatorial bandit.

     But he will miss the prize, like the bandit in Alexander Pushkin’s unfinished tale, Dubrovsky, about a bandit who loses the prize, a young woman, because he arrives late to rescue her.

     Obaseki is a joke now because he has only a few months to go. The palace knows that. They have to temporize and bid their time before a civilised turn.

     Meanwhile, Obaseki is a cross on Ighodalo’s neck.

     Will he deny himself and carry Obaseki’s cross? Will he allow himself to be cast as the candidate to sully the Benin throne?

  • Two envoys in Italy

    Two envoys in Italy

    Ademola Lookman was the moving spirit of the match. His dribble run and instinct for the killer shot made him the man of the match at the Europa League final. He won our hearts with a hat trick. Bold, imaginative, defiant, he troubled the defence, elated a crowd, subdued a tournament.

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    Europa League bowed, Atalanta Club leapt from his shoulders because he led with his feet, his goals, one, two, three. He, a Nigerian in Italy, held a flower for the Nigerian pride. He was an envoy for a maligned nation as it can be. Before him is the gangling Victor Osimhen. The man, a toast of goals, has shaken the nation each time his shot shook the nets of Italian clubs. Both are men of medals and honour for their country. They are our best ever envoys in that country. They did not need accreditation, just their sweat and sweet feet. Their president saw them in their glory and must show awe at their prowess. That is how to be an ambassador.

  • A new turn

    A new turn

    The last time Kaduna State Governor Uba Sani made national headlines, it was not about himself. Well, it was but he could not preen because it was about someone else: his predecessor, Malam El Rufai. Now he can.

    There is a reason. After a few episodes of public cacophony, the former Kaduna State leader is as quiet as an extinct volcano.  His Napoleonic stature and hubris have, like the French general, been smarting from a Waterloo. He may be in his own version of Saint Helena. His past has bullied him into silence. Inquiries about his doings in office have cast a shadow over him, and he who often blasted any slight, minimised any threat, is now a mouse without a sound.

    Governor Sani had decided to cry out. He had a debt burden. He could not heed the two labour leaders’ fulminations about wage increase and other allowances. The government was barely afloat. The waves were heady, tumbling and roaring. Drowning beckoned.

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    But Governor Uba Sani has, in the past week, drawn attention. He acted, a performance as defiance against the odds of the past month and year. He was not in a joyful mood in the past drama. But this time, out of the slumber, it was defiance with a sunny face.

    In spite of the debt agony, he has found a way forward. He is punching debt in the eye, presaging its death sentence. He is pursuing a financial reengineering. But that was not on the surface last week.

    As other governors are planning their one-year anniversary, he is commissioning. Other than over 500 kilometres of  50 roads across the state, he set two important projects in motion. One was the Panteka Market. The other was a soya bean refining plant.

    The story of Panteka is now a metaphor for the trajectory of Gov. Sani’s stewardship. A rise out of the ashes. He met the state in a state of burn. The finances had caught fire when he became governor. Because of his relationship with his predecessor, he did not want to show him up. He wanted silence and to gradually work things out. But fire cannot hide. To put it out, he had to speak out.

    Ditto to Panteka Market, a popular place he commissioned. In January, it crackled and fell from flame to ashes. Last week, Governor Sani launched its first stage of restoration. After restoring, to refine it. After refining, to prosper.

    So, for him, launching the market was saying goodbye to despair. As an activist, he knows a lot about moving forward. The market is about human development, as it is about an enabling environment to buy and sell. It is for the skills and the learner of skills. For the electrician, plumbers, masons, painters, mechanics and more. But he looks beyond that.

    “It will be the biggest technology hub in northern Nigeria,” he exhaled. A humdinger of a claim.

    This is good news away from want and fear, away from airport without access, of hoodlums tearing away at night with ingenues and virgins, of priests beheaded and villagers in flight, of airspace without flights, of schools as entrapment.

    But this market is like the story of Prophet Joshua in Zechariah’s vision. The prophet, soaked in filth, is a metaphor of a path to reconditioning. But he is told that he is “a brand – or a piece of wood – plucked out of the fire.” That is Panteka Market. It is first a rescue and later a refinement. That is Sani’s vision. Out of the fire comes forth newness. As a market that started by fabricating metals, Panteka Market hopes to become like a metal chiseled out of a fire, like a gold bar.

    Kaduna used to be the north. It was the city of power and glory, where the north went to think and counsel, where it nurtured prosperity. Adams Oshiomhole once told me about his time in Kaduna when textile boomed and the city was a mecca of talent and investors.

    That is what Kaduna should be.

    The Panteka Market is not just a market, but a way of prosperity. Economic theorist and anthropologist, Karl Polanyi argued in his opus, The Great Transformation, that markets are not meant to be contained in one place. Panteka is a free market but, by definition, free market is a contradiction. A market is less a place than a state. It is fluid, active, mercurial, a source of interaction and thought, a magnet of peoples far and near. Hence the governor made the claim that it is a hub of northern Nigeria. A market cannot, therefore, serve as just a self-contained entity or else it will challenge the social order. A modern market is witchcraft. It is here but it flies everywhere.

    Panteka can occupy a real estate, but it is London, in Maiduguri, where persons may want to exchange goods and buy. It is in the buses and trucks on the highways and the computer, whirring from emails, WhatsApp and X, in boardroom brawls and debate and decisions.

    The soya bean refining plant is less about the plant, although the plant is a very significant thing. It is bringing in a $50 million  investment. It is tapping into an agricultural potential dormant for a long time. The CEO licked his chomps to be in Kaduna. I learned he had long wanted to launch the project in Kaduna and nowhere else. But he was looking for the right atmosphere. Sani offered, and he obliged.

    It will bring jobs, but not just jobs. It will afford suppliers to the plant in markets near and far, not just about that. It is about a state regaining its pride and pride of place. Marxists say the material determines the immaterial. Sometimes and to some extent, of course. But in the final analysis, we don’t live for food and shelter. We live for pride, according to Athol Fugard, the playwright. Francis Fukuyama described it as prestige when he announced the death of communism in his book, The End of his History and the Last Man.

    But when a person cannot eat, he knows no pride. He settles for his food. Hunger can be exaggerated, especially when it confronts sentiment. May our hunger not be tested, apologies to BRF. Since independence, hunger has yielded to tribe and faith, or group in elections. We have always voted for who we love or hate but not what we want.

    Marrying Panteka with the Soya Bean refining plant shows an industrial vision of the new helmsman in Kaduna.

    It is a testament to his optimism. As George Bernard Shaw says, “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the aeroplane, the pessimist the parachute.”

    Sani sees the aeroplane, an irony for a state that airlines had abandoned. Now, the major airlines are planning to bubble through its clouds. It also shows the work the new chief of defence staff, Christopher Musa, is doing up north. Southern Kaduna, few have noticed, is getting safer. We hope it gets better.

    While his predecessor is under probe, Governor Sani is an instance of manoeuvre in a time of financial headwinds. He has bought no new cars, not for himself or any in the state. After the sore experience of the past year, he is probably acting like Sir Andrew in the famous ballad: “I am struck and wounded/ I lay me down and rest awhile/ and I’ll rise and fight again.”

  • An Obidient lawmaker and I

    An Obidient lawmaker and I

     At the College Hall of  the Yaba College of Technology, I received a lifetime award for journalism but a federal lawmaker tried to mar it for me. He walked up to me before the event started and rather than the usual hello, his first words were, “I want to know if you believe in a Nigerian rebirth?” He belongs to the Labour Party, and he reflected the Obidient lack of finesse and savoir faire, a hallmark of their political culture. I lashed back at the lawmaker by educating him that he lacked politeness and he was insulting.

    He was echoing the main lecture of the day about the quest for a national rebirth delivered with rigour and eloquence by Prof. Hope Eghagha. Prof. Eghagha showed the stumbles towards a born again nation. He believed in the capacity of President Bola Tinubu to do it but we have to watch.

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    Senator Anthony Adefuye gave a remark of optimism with humour, saying the young generation is already doing it. My take? All our attempts have been a long series of travails. The new baby has yet to cry out of the womb. Nigerians are expecting this time for baby to triumph over travail.

  • Mele steps on gas pedal

    Mele steps on gas pedal

    Two major developments in the past week passed without due attention. They are the reports about a maritime extension for Nigeria in the ocean. It is what is called the continental shelf. It is five times the size of Lagos. Imagine.

    The second was the launching of three NNPCL initiative for gas, two in Imo State and one in Delta State. These are potential game changers for revenue generation and the power industry. NNPCL has a role in both news items. In the maritime news, the Ministry of Marine and  Blue Economy has a role here.

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    The continental shelf is the richest source of wealth in the waters, especially for marine life and minerals, including oil and gas. While the monetary part is still undergoing tweaking, these two pieces of news show fiscal gifts. It must please finance minister Wale Edun.

    The gas plant in Kwale is a tie-up between NNPC Gas Infrastructure Company (NGIC) and SEEPCO, the one in Owerri is between NGIC and Seplat but the other is by NGIC alone. It is good news also for power. Mele Kyari, the NNPCL boss, is going to help Nigeria step on the gas pedal. The potential of the three gas plants cannot be overwritten.

  •  80 gbosas for Dan the “butcher”

     80 gbosas for Dan the “butcher”

    Dan Agbese, writer, editor and journalist extraordinaire, has just climbed the eighth floor, as they say. When I worked under his supervision at Newswatch, the top flower of journalism in its day, reporters and senior editors called him Dan the Butcher. I think I first heard the term from the lips of Dele Omotunde, a senior editor. A few years ago, when I told him about it, Agbese was more than a little puzzled. We called him the butcher because of efficiency with the text. He kept the flab at bay and married elegance with

    precision. Agbese had a column that brimmed with poetic discipline.

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    He expected every reporter to write with an ear to rhythm and abhor waste. So, if you wrote a 20-paragraph story, he could cut them to nine and ask you to fill it up with material, not fluff. It was an early education for me as a professional. A Time magazine editor described it as painting within the lines. Agbese propagated a stern and imperious exterior that intimidated some staff   but he was the funniest, a play behind the stare. Happy 80th.

  • A listening Farouk

    A listening Farouk

    Last week, this essayist warned the boss of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) to do his job and stop thieving marketers. Farouk Ahmed heeded, and the marketers obeyed with fuel.

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    Some of them were caught hoarding and smuggling fuel. It is a happier day for the motorist. As I noted, it was a peculiar case of an embarrassment of riches. That has been the story of Nigeria. Ahmed had stood by and let the blame go to the wrong quarters, the NNPCL, which has now been vindicated.   

  • Heir today, gone tomorrow

    Heir today, gone tomorrow

    A senior minister of the God’s Kingdom Society, the late J.T. Okome, painted a technicolor portrait at a church service many years ago that may jolt observers and players in the Rivers State crisis. Not a portrait with brush but with the facility of humour.

    The G.K.S cleric was explaining how couples lie to themselves when they fight.

    He illustrated the comic combat with a scenario. A bottle is at a spot on a dining table, he narrated, and a spouse lashed out that a few moments ago it was at the edge and not in the middle.

    So, who was the idiot that moved it to the middle when it should be at the edge?

    The other spouse fumed and countered that it was clear to anyone with eyes to see that it was always in the middle and only a fool would have moved it.

    A storm in a bottle. A message in a bottle. The simple solution is for one of them to push it to the edge where both agree it should be. But both of them were on edge. Both knew the problem was not the bottle or where it was located.

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    The bottle was not a splinter with sharp edges. So, it could not cut a hand. No hot liquid in it to burn a finger. So, one spouse could douse the grouse with one touch.

    They turned the innocent bottle into a crime. If the bottle was not broken, the couple were. It was a crime of the imagination borne out of malice. So, when two parties are in conflict, look beyond their actions. If an edifice like the state house of assembly complex is burned down, look beyond the torchbearers. It is not about the complex.

    Though it is. It is more complex than that, and therefore it is about something else. If a governor says, he can sanctify a budget on four lawmakers’ votes even though the law says otherwise, you know it is not because the governor does not know.

    He wears impunity like a crown just to advertise something he does not say. So, we know it is about something else when he says he will not govern on bended knees – a nifty quote. It is not about knees, though. We know of a father and a former governor who played father to the former governor when he preened as the chief executive. He sat pretty on front-row seats, with his ornate Rivers hat and benign smiles. His wife of judicial titles supremely sat beside him.

    They were the political royals of Rivers State. Indeed, no one garnered more respect, more dignity than the power couple in their near octogenarian halo. The former governor named big schools and buildings after them. Suddenly this same man decided to switch fatherhood when the former governor played father to a son, who is now governor. This governor and former governor crossed swords. As father of fathers, he accompanied both father and son to sign an accord so that both parties may abide in peace. He signed. He acted like a father of the godfather then. Now, this same man is now happy with his chomps in the new dispensation. So, he has decided to be a populist on behalf of his new son, who is the son of his son. That makes him father of fathers or grandfather.

    No one grants him the status of grandfather, though. So, he remains father. He has jettisoned his former son. He is a prostitute father whose hat now invokes hate in a part of the family. He is father today and a reject the next day. He swaps sons just as he changes fatherhood. Father today, gone tomorrow. His former son had a tiff not long ago with an elder in his party and daubed him a “prodigal father.” He has been quite quiet on this paternal about-face. So, this man who was supposed to be a father of governors, he being a former one, can be called the governor of governors in the state. Or governor emeritus. He is now former governor without merit. He has lost the quality of a statesman. He is supposed to be the arbiter, the peacemaker in the maelstrom. He is an elder without a white hair if white signifies the wisdom of age. This is the same man who is playing a royal against charges of corruption and has been able to secure a regal immunity against the law after allegedly dipping his hand in the meaty pie. Even the EFCC has been unable to revive the charge. He is perpetually innocent. Now this man with a shadow of corruption over his head is strutting the Rivers State high society and its plebian floor as though he is the moral exemplar of all time. So, we see that it is not about the law. He himself knows that working the law is futile. He is an instance. He knows that you can defy the law and live. Why can he not turn an extra-legal instrument for peace. If he can turn the law to honour himself by paralysing a corruption charge in the court, why not “abandon” legality for a positive thing?

     He can do that by making peace outside of the law as the elder. People describe it as settling out of court. He would rather hold court as an elder of confusion. He can talk to both parties and broker peace. The president did it for him. He was there and he signed it. As the elder in the pact, he was the guarantor of its integrity. If it collapsed, it is because he failed. Whatever it took, he should have fought by stealth or in the open to make peace. Rather, at a public function, with glib lips unbecoming of a 75-year-old, he announced that the governor is the political leader of the state. He did not have to say it, even if he felt it. That was not in the spirit of the accord or even in the spirit of cutting off the umbilical cord between parent and child.

    Over 25 members of the state house of assembly said they had defected. But that seems only by lips. There is no document, no signatures, no formal declarations in the house. The law says if they defect, they lose their seat if there is no crisis in the party on a national scale. That may yet be determined. But the law says it is not enough to announce defection and lose a seat, the speaker must declare the seats vacant. The speaker has done no such thing. So, we know, too, it is not about defection. It is not about whether there is a national crisis or a local crisis. We all know that. The so-called elder knows it. The godfather knows. So does the son whether on his feet or bended knees. It is not time for anger and rage. If we follow that, we become victim of a Hobbesian state of nature. Some of the rage in either camp is like the line from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, “Sir, I am vexed, bear with my weakness.” But weakness, as we see in the play, can lead a person to a storm of no return. It’s impotent rage. So, the real thing is between two men, and the only way is to set aside the law and face humans who are at loggerheads.  Stoking the streets will not help. Whipping up ethnic bile will only complicate matters. As Thoreau said, “the law has not made anyone a whit more just.”  When the pharisees quibbled over doing a miracle on a sabbath day, Jesus replied that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath. To clarify the spirit rather than the letter of the law on physical circumcision, Apostle Paul asked adherents to “circumcise the foreskins of your hearts.” The other part is mass hypocrisy. When the man was a candidate, the mass backed him as a son. He was a good boy until he became a bad boy. He broke a pact and everyone pretends they did not understand each other. As Shakespeare noted in Julius Caesar, “what other oath than honesty to honesty engaged.” It was a pact without honour. Rather than sit between themselves and decide who followed their deal, they are trying to bring third parties into it. Eventually a breakdown may occur, and everyone is trying to stick to the law as they like, like a man who issues an order for the legislature to meet in government house. He has become a mass hireling. Heir today, hireling tomorrow. They may be flirting with hammer in the form of a state of emergency. They should realise that impunity has a sunset. Darkness will fall on it. Both sides must realise that. It is more the onus of the chief executive to bring the crisis to a bended knee. Or else…                                     

  • The salesman

    The salesman

    At a party with journalist colleagues in the early 2000s, in the United States, a young lady propounded a question.

    “Sam,” she said with a distinct southern twang, “you must be amused by how our country emphasizes things. As a media person, what do you tell your students about how we Americans follow issues?”

    “The pitch,” I replied without hesitation or remorse.

    I had not used the word in any of my classes as a journalism professor. The idea resonated, though, in my class discussions. But the word “pitch” probably bounced into my head in the revelry of food and music. Among the chaos of activities, the media could pick a matter of no significance and twirl it into the galaxy. It waxes into a cause celebre. Everyone follows it. It is quintessentially American. It is quintessentially modern.

    The media knows it and exploits it. Once a stray bomb hit a Chinese embassy in Europe, and the US media wrote glibly about a world war. I told fellow journalists why a thing everyone knew was a mistake was played up with the prose of an apocalypse.

    “Sam, why are you taking the fun out of this? This is what makes the media tick,” said an editor.

    I learned my lesson. The media was thriving on it. I reminded myself quietly that the media had fomented wars in the past, including the Spanish-American War.

    All American CEOs, whether they sell pins or news, know that their first task is to retail, and to sell you need a great sales pitch. Without that, you fail. Without  that, you are not American. America taught the world how to gospelize goods. The American president knows that to govern, you must market, not just your programmes but also yourself.

    The American has sold sugar into diabetes, fat into malignancy, sex into a lax and sinful world. But it has elevated the world with cars, aircraft, medical miracles, computers. In fact, an American president, Calvin Coolidge, said, “the main business of the American people is business.”

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has spent a good part of his stewardship as a salesman. He is establishing himself as our first business president. In the past week, he continued in The Netherlands and Saudi Arabia what he has been doing home and abroad. It is interesting that he visited The Netherlands. Few know that The  Netherlands introduced some of the ideas that make the modern world. It preceded England in the rule of law, in the flowering of laissez-faire and a world without serfs. In fact, William of Orange, a Dutchman, invaded England and allied with a royal in marriage to foment its Glorious Revolution that set the country apart as the most enduring democracy in the world. English democracy would grow by instalments from the seed of William of Orange. Like Tinubu did with Lagos foreshore, The Netherlands was water before it became land. There was a saying that God made the earth, but the Dutch made The Netherlands.

    President Tinubu did not begin with The Netherlands. He has been at it from the first month. He attended an event in Europe, was in India where he met with the high and mighty of Indian business, travelled to United Nations General Assembly where he became a convener of meetings and uttered a cry on the world’s podium not only for his country but continent. He also attended the Dubai event of what is known as COP 28 where he penned a deal with Siemens. Critics were more interested in entourage than substance. Just like the Qatar visit when it became a sin for a father to travel with his sons even if the sons helped broker the opportunity. Yet, many of our elite would rather sneak in amours and spark night parties in many a trip.

    It was cheering to see a Nigerian president speak off the cuff on the virtues of his country much maligned by some of its aggrieved citizens and some media vagrants. President Tinubu is selling his country while others would rather sell out.  The president has a lot to evangelise. The subsidy removal against its malcontents, the battle to save a currency against vampires, the credit system, students loans, the single window system, the Paluka project in northern Nigeria, the infrastructure programme like the Lagos-Calabar Superhighway, the agriculture programme, the redrawing of the immigration plan, etc.

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    He is the first president who is taking the idea of salesman as a passion. No one can retail your product like yourself. Sales thrives in special atmosphere in a country. One of them is a guarantee of private property. The law must protect what you earn. Two is the rule of law. Three is a stable currency. Four is availability of credit. The major challenge has been the currency, but the vampires and naysayers are not relenting. It is a task CBN chief Yemi Cardoso is tackling with a wrestler’s gear.

     The job of salesman is not the president’s alone. Not Bayo Onanuga’s alone. It is for everyone in government but we are not seeing enough from his cabinet. We have seen FCT Minister Nyesom Wike has been A class. Not enough can be said of Works Minister David Umahi,  who has held town meetings, media talks and expounded with method and eloquence the projects on his plate. Interior Minister Olubunmi Ojo is transforming immigration and showcasing it. So is Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo and Attorney General Lateef Fagbemi.

    Selling a country is within the tradition of statesmen. Franklin Roosevelt distinguished himself during the Great Depression and popularized his radio chat like a weekly sermon. Greek Prime minister Alexis Tsipras made a fashion of his attack on his country’s recession by defrocking himself of his shirt ties. Churchill marketed his plea for American help in the Second World War ratcheting up motherly love. His mother was American. “I have a latchkey,” he buzzed, “to the American heart.”

    There are poor salesmen today like Netanyahu and Putin. The best known today, though, is Volodymyr Zelensky, who sometimes gets under the Western skin to get arms.  After all, a salesman is supposed not only retail a product but to banish want and advance standard of living, like in P.G. Wodehouse’s short story, The Birth of a Salesman.

  • Mister Fuel Scarcity

    Mister Fuel Scarcity

    I want to know what Engineer Farouk Ahmed is doing about fuel scarcity. He is the fellow who heads the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA). As of April 28th, his agency reported stock profile of fuel at 1.547 billion litres. That is a lot of fuel.

    The Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) confirmed this. That means two things. One, we should not have fuel scarcity with such plenty. Two, Ahmed’s agency should not be in the news. Both are unfortunately in the news. What we have is a new definition of the embarrassment of riches. We have but can’t get or see. Motor spirit under Ahmed’s eyes and watch has become a spirit.

    It is the job of the CEO of NMDPRA to ensure that fuel is supplied and that the motor spirit reaches the final mile: the motorist. If that is not happening it is because of the inefficiency of one man: Farouk Ahmed. He is supposed to deploy forces across the country, from petrol station to depot, to ensure there is no grease monkey doing monkey business with our oil.

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    But Ahmed is missing in action. Hence, we have oil marketers taking advantage. They provide enough fuel in the stations to tease a hungry public. Then enters arbitrage. Arbitrage only prospers amidst sabotage. Oil marketers are making a shylock’s profit just by allowing the ordinary citizen to queue, crawl and cry for drops of fuel. NNPCL said there was a vessel problem and it has been addressed. NMDPRA was aware of this and the logistic snafu had been resolved.

    So, major supplier NNPCL said we had enough for 30 days. In less than three days, the crisis persisted. It is therefore over to the regulator, not NNPCL, to ensure that all is well. He should do his task and right now; or else, he remains Mister Fuel Scarcity.