The Nation Newspaper

Category: Adebayo Lamikanra

Language activism (I)

Mankind has travelled a long and tortuous road to arrive at this current point of incontestable global dominance. The oldest fossil which has been identified as being definitely human was discovered in East Africa in 1974. Irreverently named Lucy, she lived some 3.2 million years ago, still physically and genetically different from any human being alive today but already distinct from the most advanced of our cousins, the apes. Studies on the fossil suggested that Lucy, who was hardly a metre tall, died as a result of a fall from a tall tree on which she had, as usual, sought refuge from the routine predation from one of the large cats with which she shared her immediate neighbourhood. In other words, she was just one of the creatures investing a space from which she could extract some subsistence for one more day of a truly precarious existence. It was an existence that was devoid of any form of comfort or promise. Each day dawned and was lived through as best as it was possible. No tomorrows existed in that arid and murderously competitive environment but Lucy and her humanoid companions desperately clung to life to which no other purpose other than survival could be attached. Man evolved over the next three million years until Homo sapiens arrived on the scene to create a brave new world in which some foggy sense could be made of human existence. That human species has grown to colonise every inch of geographic space outside the stubbornly unconquerable space of the Antarctic. And has become the most decisive force on earth both for evil and for good. Man has become the ruthless apex predator to whom all other knees must bow. The result of a recent experiment shows that the most dangerous sound in the jungle is not the dreadful roar of a lion on the hunt or a tiger on the lookout for what to devour but the sound of human voices in conservation. All animals who heard that sound fled precipitously from it. On reflection, that is the most sensible course of action under those circumstances.

Mankind is the preeminent species on earth but not because of her stark physical characteristics. Put the biggest, strongest man next to a lion if you want to test this statement. Human dominance is certainly not physical. It is mental. It proceeds from his brain. Mankind is capable of thought from which comes the strategic planning which makes it possible for him to solve all problems collectively. What makes man truly awesome however is his ability to pool his thoughts with any number of other men through his ability to communicate. That is the basis of our much vaunted exceptionalism. The dinosaurs which ruled the earth for 150 million years before the sun set on them on one cataclysmic autumn evening fifty million years ago ruled the global environment through their sheer bulk which was augmented with a little brain. They were therefore not able to craft their environment to their will. With our species, the reverse is the truth and we not only have massive brains, we can enhance the effectiveness of those brains through the process of hooking up any number of brains through the power of language. Each person anywhere can communicate with his neighbour through the medium of speech using mutually intelligible languages of which there are now just over 7,000, with more than 400 of them spoken in Nigeria, one of the most linguistically diverse spaces on earth. Each of those languages spoken on earth represents some geographical and cultural niche, none more precious nor more important than the other. You cannot or definitely should not try to separate me from my Yoruba language because by doing so you are depriving me of my cultural heritage. Not only that, my failure to pass this heritage on to my children is a tragedy and reeks of criminal negligence. If you are Yoruba and wilfully refuse to pass on that language to your children, you are guilty of some form of cultural homicide and stand condemned. I use Yoruuba as an example here for the simple reason that I am Yoruba. You can substitute whatever is your mother tongue at this point.

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Language is of such importance to any human being that we all come to the world with the genetic endowment of language adaptability. Noam Chomsky, the globally acclaimed grandfather of modern linguistics has postulated that every child born anywhere in the world has come with his brain wired to appreciate the grammar, that is, the structure of every language spoken on earth. It is not difficult to imagine that there are many opponents of this theory if only because it puts every language on the same pedestal, a situation which is anathema to those who seek comfort in the superiority of one language over all others. Some have also argued that nature and nurture are responsible for language development and Chomsky has not acknowledged the role of nurture in this process. You can think about that.

I am inclined to support Chomsky in this matter, not because he needs my puny support but because I encountered a version of this theory from my grandmother long before I was made aware of the existence of Professor Chomsky or his theory. My grandmother came calling when my first son was born. Although she had been dandling babies; her children, grandchildren and great grand children on her knees for more than seven decades, she was still as excited about this one as she was with all the others that came before him. As she fondled him, she spoke directly to him, welcoming him to the world in her Ilara-Mokin (Ondo State) dialect. Some wag present on that occasion pointed out to the old lady that the baby could not possibly have any understanding of that language. Fortified by the weight of her age, my grandmother explained that all babies came to the world with the capacity to understand every language. They are however only able to speak the language or languages spoken to them in their infancy. In other words, children are able to speak all languages spoken to them but lose that ability by the time they are entering puberty.

As far as I was concerned, this theory was proved to me shortly after my grandmother exposed me to it. A friend of mine, a fellow Ijesa married an Ibo lady shortly afterwards. I mention his Ijesa antecedents because we Ijesas are rather prone to marrying across tribal and other lines (Shout out to my in-laws in Akwa Ibom) but that is not the point of this story. The point here is that this Ibo bride arrived with the ability to speak Yoruba with the fluency of a native Yoruba speaker. When I asked her which part of Yorubaland she grew up in, she assured me that she had not lived in any part of Yorubaland before her marriage. Seeing my bewilderment, she explained that she was born and bred in the North. There, she lived in close proximity with Yorubas from whom she picked up their language. They were all taught in Hausa in their primary school as well and she was as fluent in that language as she was in Yoruba and Ibo which she spoke at home. She also spoke English of course so, she had four languages in her locker without having made any effort to learn any of them. No further proof needed to support my granny’s theory which is of course related also to Chomsky. The fundamental importance of language to human development is shown by this one observation but I am sure that there are many others that can be called upon. Our brains are wired to understand every language we encounter before the age of ten or thereabouts. After that age, that window of opportunity is closed and those who wish to reopen it have to do so through the use of considerable effort, which most people are loath to do.

November 30, 2025
Language activism

My language epiphany occurred in the summer of 1986. I had just spent a sabbatical year in Sweden and was on my way back home when I made a short detour to Manchester to present the work I had been doing in Sweden at a gathering of microbiologists from all over the world. After my presentation, one of my listeners hung around until after every other person had left. He then came up to me and congratulated me on a brilliant presentation. I accepted his congratulations graciously because I thought he wanted to discuss various aspects of my presentation with me. But he soon disabused my mind of that notion when he told me how much he admired the quality of my command of the English language. I was still wondering about how best I should respond to him when he went on to ask me if I had a language of my own. After all, for all my understanding of the language, I was obviously not English. I immediately decided that this was a gratuitous insult to which I needed to respond robustly.

‘Of course!’ I replied with considerable heat, much more heat than my interlocutor could have expected. I went on to tell him that although I had spoken English virtually all my life, my mother tongue was Yoruba, spoken by millions of people in Nigeria and other parts of the Yoruba Diaspora in other parts of West Africa and the New World. I was in suit and tie and had a tag which identified me as coming from Sweden and maybe should have condoned his inquisitiveness but I really was not in charitable mode, so I quickly dismissed him. Looking back now, I realise that I should have thanked him because he set me on the path of Yoruba language activism, a path which I have found to be vastly rewarding.

The follow-up to the above encounter happened three years later. I was back in Sweden for another work stint in Uppsala University and had run into a colleague from Ife, who was also on a research visit to Sweden, in the street. After a brief conversation, I invited him to my lab, an invitation which he accepted. When he showed up at my lab a few days later, I made him realise that our conversation throughout the period of his visit to the lab was to be Yoruba. Not only that, it was to be Yoruba which was not under any circumstances to be laced with English words. I wanted my Swedish colleagues to appreciate the fact that I had a language of my own and that language was definitely not English. My coup was stunningly successful. After the departure of my guest, everyone expressed an opinion about my language which they all agreed sounded musical to them. At a departmental party later on, they all wanted me to sing a song or two in Yoruba. I went further to treat them to a meal of rice and fish stew, just as I would have, had they visited me at home in Nigeria. Although it made their noses stream and faces flushed, they assured me that they had found the food delicious. Through these activities, I had brought a small slice of Nigeria (Yoruba) culture to the lab and taught them a much appreciated lesson in cultural studies.

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On my next visit to Europe, I decided to dress in such a way that advertised the fact that I was coming straight from a part of Africa where buba and sokoto were part of the culture. I did not want to be identified as an exile in Europe. When I got back home from that trip, I decided to do away with European attire completely and took to wearing my buba and sokoto on practically all occasions. However, my full conversion to language activism did not come until much later and it came on home soil, right here in Nigeria, in Owerri.

On that day, I was in Owerri on the invitation of Peter Umez, to the launch of his first volume of poetry. He had sent the manuscript of the book to me when he had finished writing it, with the request that I edited it and so, by the time the book was published I was recognised as having made a useful contribution to the writing of the book hence the invitation to the launch. I was of course warmly received and placed on the high table with other dignitaries which included the Eze of the poet’s village as well as the Vice Chancellor of Federal University of Technology (FUTO).

After the introductions had been made, I was told that kola was to be presented and as everyone knew, the only language that kola understood was Igbo and so they were sorry that I could not follow the ritual since I did not understand the language. I was amused by this because being Ijesa, the kola that was to be used, quite probably was grown in my backyard. After all, it was not for nothing that Ijesas are described as coming from the land of the kola nut. I watched as the kola nut was presented and plotted my revenge for my exclusion.

Shortly after the kola was presented, I was invited to make a speech as I knew I would be. I got up, looked up at all the faces present and then, quite deliberately broke into Yoruba. The first response was consternation but this was almost replaced with applause, loud and prolonged. My hosts received my Yoruba words with appreciation, as if I had honoured them by linguistically taking them back home with me. What I found out after my speech, which I had to more or less repeat in English, was that a significant minority of those present in that hall spoke Yoruba, some of them fluently! The Eze with whom I had spoken a few words before the speech welcomed me back to my seat in perfect Yoruba and told me that not only had he spent some time in Lagos but that he was an Ife alumnus, another attribute that we shared. I had become doubly welcome to what was described as a home away from home on the wings of those Yoruba words with which I had addressed my hosts.

There is still a reverse side to this language story. I was on the train to Stockholm from Uppsala one surprisingly sunny day when I heard one of my fellow travellers speaking English. There should not have been anything strange about this since most Swedes spoke English, or perhaps I should say, they spoke a form of English which had a thick underlay of their native tongue. It was okay as a form of communication but it was very strange to my ears which is why those ears were pricked up by the sound of a voice speaking English as it should be spoken. After a few months of hearing English in Swedish mouths, the words coming out of his mouth were music to my starved ears. I was immediately drawn to him and as soon as we exchanged the first words, we bonded instantly and were transported into a new world of our own making, a world from which all the Swedes around us were ruthlessly excluded. Such is the power of language. The language of inclusion in this case was English but every other language spoken anywhere in the world is similarly imbued with the same power.

Language is a fundamental human property, so powerful that without it, we would definitely not be human. It is not for nothing that our scientific name is Homo sapiens (Wise man). Our wisdom which has allowed us to conquer the world is based on our ability to compliment each other’s thoughts. Because of our ability to communicate through the use of words, we have been able to connect all our brains together to process a whole lot of data, to put it in the simplest terms possible, without the power of speech, the last of us would have perished in some miserable hole in the ground many thousands of years ago. This is not a fanciful statement because our closely related cousins, the Neanderthals suffered this gruesome fate about 40,000 years ago.

November 23, 2025
Finding a cure for madness

Perhaps the most important aspect of writing a weekly column is to retain relevance throughout the period of its existence. Your readers deserve to come away with something tangible from reading any of your articles as this is the only way that they would come back week after week to share a few minutes with you. This does not mean that they would always take sides with your argument. Indeed, if this is one of your motives for writing then, you are bound to be disappointed if only because your readers arrive at your column with many different perspectives and there is no way that you can give satisfaction to all your visitors. You can only try but, no matter how hard you try, the thought must always be at the back of your mind that all you write will sooner or later find its way to a rubbish dump both physically and figuratively, no matter how hard you try. And yet your primary focus must be to give some measure of room to your readers, to complete a circle of trust within which you derive the authority with which you command the attention of those who take the trouble to bring themselves up to date with the current state of your mind.

When I turned my mind to writing this week’s edition of this column, my first inclination was to continue where I left off last week in my discussion of the current dire situation of academia in Nigeria. After all, whatever relevance I have cannot be separated from my academic career. Whatever the colour of my academic experience however, I cannot expect everyone to share my enthusiasm or interest in that subject, especially in the light of recent developments all around us. Midway through the first paragraph which was to launch my discussion on the travails of contemporary Nigerian lecturers, I found that my mind had strayed into fields of other pressing issues stirring the hearts and minds of the great Nigerian public to the virtual exclusion of everything else, except of course, the issue of the pressing matter of settling the issue of keeping body and soul together. In the interest of satisfying my readers I have therefore chosen to pivot to what I can only describe as a more exciting field of interest this week.

I remember with startling distinction, the horror I felt that day, it was a Saturday, when I read in a newspaper that the leader of the Boko Haram group (or sect) had, to use contemporary description, been neutralised whilst in what should have been safe custody of the Nigerian Police. There was a time during the civil war when the term wasted was used to describe such an act. However, whichever way we care to say it, the man had been summarily executed and I knew quite instinctively that grave consequences were bound to follow that extrajudicial murder. What I had no way of knowing at the time was the quantum of the mayhem with which we were going to have to cope with, a decade and a half down the line. So many years of our discomfiture have passed and a huge deluge of dirty water has flowed under the bridge since then. And yet, the only thing we are clear about at this time is that our collective suffering over this matter, however painful it has been, is very far from over. The intensity has increased past fever pitch from time to time. It is no wonder that it has flared up recently and begun to raise our temperature in the manner of a herpes attack. The sad thing about herpes is that it is incurable. It comes and goes unpredictably but it is always there waiting to remind the sufferer of its maddening presence. Boko Haram and other related off shoots of this group have inserted themselves

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with murderous intent into the very soul of our country. Curing it is presenting the level of difficulty associated with curing cancer. It cannot be done without inflicting a great deal of pain on the patient. Even after going through the terrible pain associated with this attempt at a cure, there is no guarantee that the attempt, any attempt at a cure, is eventually successful.

One of the phrases trending these days and one from which you cannot get away is that you cure madness with madness. The madness of insurgence, whatever its form, can only be cured with the madness of high intensity military action, a form of insurgence on its own. The people responsible for our current troubles answer to many names; Fulani herdsmen, kidnappers, plain old fashioned terrorists, bandits and the odd armed robbers who operate within urban spaces. Their activities have made nonsense of our security and are now in a position to dictate terms to the government of Nigeria. In other words, they have left our sovereignty in utter ruins. Long gone are the days when our roads, all of them, in different parts of the country could be traversed with confidence at any time of day and night. This brings back to my mind a journey I made from Ife which ended in Kano at 3.30 am in Kano. Even as we made our lonely way through that dark night not once did any fear of danger cross my mind. That was in 1998, a date which has now been completely swallowed up in the murky mist of time.

Gone also are the days when going to the farm to till the compliant soil was just part of everyday living. Now, farmers carrying on their calling in any part of the country, even those very far from the active theatre of insurrection have become members of a seriously endangered species. They are hunted down like vermin and their farms systematically looted and turned into sterile spaces where only sadness grows. When will the government, responsible for our collective security, dredge up the madness with which to cure the madness of those people who think that their madness is a ticket to some fantastic paradise. A massive time bomb is ticking in this respect.

The threat of societal collapse in the face of the madness which has been unleashed on the country is a common factor which binds the disparate groups involved in undermining the sovereignty of Nigeria together. Another crucial factor they have in common is their stated allegiance to the Muslim faith and this is a complication which we could deal without. The vast majority of Muslims in this country have not been inflicted with the madness of insurgency but have not been spared the pain of the violence dealt out by some of the adherents of their faith. As a matter of fact, it may even be true to say that because the area of operations for these insurgents are inhabited mainly by Muslims, they are the primary victims of this madness. However, the equation is further complicated in those areas of majority Christian inhabitants. These people stand nakedly vulnerable to this mad situation and the charge of genocide or at least ethnic cleansing has has become increasingly difficult to refute. In some parts of the world this charge has become irrefutable and this has precipitated the furore which has gripped the nation in the last couple of weeks and continues to reverberate through it, picking up an unhealthy head of steam with every passing day. According to Donald Trump, the self proclaimed strong man of the United States and also the self appointed policeman to the world, he has ordered his sidekick in the so called Department of War to develop plans for the invasion of Nigeria. He has made it clear that this decision had been taken in the light of his determination to rescue Nigerian Christians from the hell that Nigeria has become.

Quite predictably, this announcement has gathered a great deal of interest within the country. It is generating a great deal of heat but very little light and heating up the polity to no discernable purpose. It is however important to point out that it is wishful thinking for us to look up to foreigners, least of all, any American of whatever hue or stripe, to prepare and administer what would be a magic potion with which to cure the madness with which we are now afflicted. This is a home grown affliction which requires a local remedy for any expectations of an eventual cure to be entertained.

November 16, 2025
‘Professors travel first class’

On a cool autumn evening in October 1976, I was in the departure lounge of Heathrow Airport. In my hand luggage was a freshly bound PhD thesis of the Victoria University of Manchester which I had successfully defended a little over a month before. This was the end of a journey which had occupied my mind for just over three years, indeed ever since I landed in that same airport three years before on my way up north, to Manchester, to start my postgraduate studies in Pharmaceutical Microbiology. At the beginning of that course, I was cocky enough not to entertain any fear of failure. After all, I already had a degree from the University of Ife under my belt and was sure that I could rely on the quality of my preparation for my Manchester adventure. And so it proved. That was at a time when all our external examiners were invited from British universities which meant that our degrees were as good, if not better than the degrees awarded in Britain. To tell the truth, I was so relaxed about the whole thing that I was looking forward to the challenge before me. I was also eager to link up with my friend and classmate at Igbobi College, Remi Olatunbosun who at that time had already spent four glorious years in Manchester. With his help, I settled down quickly and was soon hard at work because I wanted to get back home as quickly as possible. That was also because I missed home with an intensity which caught me by the throat and acted as a spur towards the completion of my course. That urge to be done with it was so strong that I did not give any thought to waiting around in Manchester after the defence of my thesis to attend the graduation ceremony which was to take place in December. This was to the evident disappointment of my father who would have loved to have a photograph of his first son in the colourful robes and baggy cap to show the extent of my success which was a reflection of his own.

On that cool autumn evening, my excitement level was sky high as I waited for the call which was to precede the actual boarding of my plane to Lagos. As I waited for that call, I saw a well suited man who I recognised as a Professor at Ife. To while away the little time I had left on British soil, I went over to engage him in conversation. The quizzical look on his face when I bade him good evening showed that he had no idea who the hell I was so, I quickly introduced myself. I was going to say that I was Mr. Lamikanra when I remembered in the nick of time, that I had earned the right to be addressed as Dr. Lamikanra of the Faculty of Pharmacy and quickly made that correction.

‘What has brought you to London?’ I was asked.

I replied that I was going home having just completed my PhD programme in Manchester.

The Prof’s eyes lit up behind his glasses when he heard this and he congratulated me very warmly. And he said he looked forward to seeing me in Ife. This happened in the following years but always from some distance. At this point our boarding announcement was heard over the loud speaker and I made my way quickly to my seat on the plane as if there was some danger of being left behind in the rush for takeoff. It was a night flight but I did not sleep a wink throughout. On two or three occasions during the flight, I took a walk up and down the plane and it suddenly occurred to me that the professor had simply vanished because I did not catch any glimpse of him anywhere on the plane but I was too excited to spend any time thinking about that strange disappearance. I even thought that there was a possibility that he was not on the plane at all. But after the plane had landed in Lagos, I caught sight of him waiting for his luggage just as I was about to do.

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‘Good morning sir’ I greeted him respectfully.

His response was warm in the way of an elder to a deserving younger person. I was therefore prompted to tell him that I was wondering where he was during the flight. His response was full of enlightenment.

‘Professors travel first class’ I was told. In other words, I had been looking for him in the wrong place. I may have earned the right to be called Doctor but my place was still in economy class! Travelling first class was something I could look forward to when I became a professor, whenever it was that I joined that exalted group of academics. I quickly put that thought out of my mind as that possibility was at that time too lofty for my attention since I was still, at least technically a lowly graduate assistant. Not even a proper lecturer until I had completed the interview which was to be staged on arrival at Ife. Seven years later however that flat statement was thrust into my face at a meeting of the University Appointments and Promotion Committee. By that time, I had become a Senior Lecturer and was representing Congregation on the committee. We had just approved a sabbatical leave for a Professor of Agriculture who was going off to spend his leave outside the country. The first six months of the leave were to be spent in the Philippines and the other six months in the USA. The Head of Department who had come to present the case was gathering his papers preparatory to taking his leave when the Vice Chancellor made a passionate appeal to him.

He reminded him and the rest of us that the professor was entitled to a first class round trip ticket as a result of the approval that his application had just received. The University finances were however not sufficiently buoyant to give him what in effect was a round the world first class ticket. Could the HOD appeal to the professor to accept an economy class ticket so that there would be money left over to accommodate the application of other deserving members of staff? The Head promised to pass on that passionate appeal to the professor. Come to think of it, I have no idea if the appeal worked or not but knowing the temperament of most academics, I am sure that the professor took that trip in economy class. He must have thought he was taking one for the team. As for me, when I went to Sweden on sabbatical leave two years later, my wife and two children were, in addition to me, furnished with return tickets to Arlanda. That was at a time when there was a fully staffed department within the Registry which dealt with staff travels. So many members of staff were going abroad for various reasons that the members of that department were kept busy all year round. The chilly winds of poverty had just begun blowing ever so gently over the university in 1985 but it was soon to achieve the status of gale force winds. Since then, those harsh winds have swept the academic environment bare of all comforts and the issue of professors travelling first class became the subject of bitter anecdotes a long time ago. So long ago that those presently serving as lecturers in our universities are likely to dismiss it as the result of an overactive imagination. The prevailing reality is that Professors hardly get to travel out of the country at all these days, not to think of travelling first class.

November 9, 2025
Dangote on my mind (VI)

The news coming out of the Nigerian oil and gas sector in the last few weeks has been uniformly bad and threatening to get worse. The distress in this sector was first seen when the price of cooking gas suddenly went through the roof in the wake of a spiteful strike no less suddenly declared by powerful trade unions within the petroleum industry. Gas supplies to key areas including the Dangote refinery were shut down, in an attempt to cripple the operations of the Dangote refinery. According to the strikers, they were determined to protect the expressed interest of their so-called members who, as they claimed were slaving with little reward to produce the fuel which was to be sold to innocent Nigerians. This was a naked attempt to unionize the work force against the wishes of the company management. When this excuse was seen to be increasingly transparent and untenable, the focus of the strike was shifted to take in some workers who had allegedly been relieved of their jobs for no reason other than that they had chosen to join a union. Whatever the reason for the strike, the result was catastrophic. The operation of the Dangote refinery was crippled, cooking gas prices were doubled, the price of petrol at the pumps went up and queues began to form for the first time in more than a year. Although common sense was made to prevail in the end, a great deal of harm had been done, not the least being the inching up of the cost of petrol. This is especially worrisome because of the knock on effect of this to inflation. Every Naira increase in the price of each litre of petrol sold was sure to tick up the rate of inflation which, must have been terrible news to the managers of the economy.

The cost of petrol is high, punishingly high and the renewed increase in the price of petrol is threatening to wipe out the gains that have been achieved in the fight against inflation, perhaps the greatest threat to the nation’s economy. The other front in our battle for recovery from the malaise plaguing our economy is of course the stability of the value of foreign exchange and this has also been brought into play to the further detriment of the economy. The issue of the value of the Naira vis a vis the American dollar has been a fiercely burning one for all of forty years; since our flighty if not outrightly flaky but dangerously violent government of the day, quite ill advisedly pitched the value of the Naira against that of all convertible currencies. The excuse given for this marked idiocy was that it claimed that it was following what turned out to be the jaundiced advice of the IMF. Following this, we became sheepish clients of the twin economic terrorists otherwise known as the World Bank and the IMF. Quite apart from any other consideration, the coming to life of the Dangote refinery was supposed to ease the pressure on the Naira which had become so distressed that it lacked a discernible heart beat. It had been brought to this sorry pass at least partly because for many years, large sums of foreign exchange had been committed to the importation of vast quantities of petrol in an opaque manner under what is now a discredited fuel subsidy regime. It had become imperative that the Naira be put back together if we were to remain an economic entity. The time for any experimentation with our currency is long past. What has to be done is to closely monitor the use of any available foreign exchange and throwing any of it in the way of fuel importation has to be described as criminally negligent. But this is precisely what a group of Nigerians who proudly described their association as that of fuel importers were defending. Apparently they scout the world for the cheapest available petrol, load the fuel into any available transport enroute Lagos. The fuel is then stored in large depots described as tank farms from where it is distributed all over Nigeria in diesel driven tankers. This has been the tried and tested formula for several decades and has become an addiction. A drug on which the operator had become hopelessly psychologically dependent. Now, they cannot see any way to deal with what ails them and they expect the country to suffer the extreme symptoms of withdrawal with them, a classic aspect of drug addiction behaviour. A drug addict will sell their mother and siblings thrown in for good measure in order to feed their habit. It is left to his significant others to take steps to save themselves.

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To tell the truth, in economic terms, the Nigerian economy can rightly be described as being on life support, a patient that needs the constant care of a carefully assembled team of variously talented and extremely well trained specialists who must quickly respond to all the symptoms which assail their patient. In other words, we are in a state of emergency. This is why it is baffling that the managers of our rescue mission, that is, the government did not respond more robustly to the situation precipitated by the drug users among us. No union should be allowed at this critical point in time to use their immense power to jeopardise the economic well being of Nigeria. More than a year after the Dangote refinery began producing petrol, it is bewildering that the Central Bank is still providing foreign exchange to the tune of more than a billion dollars this year for the importation of fuel. With locally refined petrol available, allowing such vast amounts of what can only be described as scarce foreign exchange to be incinerated on the altar of fuel imports is, to be honest, downright unacceptable. This is more so when for the first time ever in the history of our country, refined petroleum products are being exported from these shores. The time has come for a comprehensive review of what we can afford to spend our foreign exchange on. Dangote can be said to have presented the nation with a facility which can take care of the supply of petrol to run our economy. The best that can be done for the foreign exchange hungry importers of petrol is to phase out the availability of foreign exchange from the Central Bank over a defined period of time, say twelve months. This period should be enough to take care of whatever withdrawal symptoms they may be suffering from. The harsh reality is that the era of fuel importation is now over and those who have grown fat on profit from this arrangement are like dinosaurs whose extinction time has arrived. They have to go. This is in obedience to the iron laws of nature and indeed, economics. It would be counter productive for fuel importers to set themselves up as competitors to Dangote. In the first place, the news from Lekki is that there are plans afoot to double the productive capacity of the Dangote refinery in short order. The other consideration and one which may not be of immediate importance to the fuel importers is that there are at least sixteen different fractions into which Dangote can break his supply of crude oil. They may be frothing at the mouth in respect of petrol but what about the other fifteen fractions? There is no contest.

Nigeria has always been the exporter of her natural resources. This is one of the reasons why our economic development has been slow, abysmally so. We have sold our natural resources for a pittance and have compounded our economic weakness by importing the refined products of those same raw materials at astronomical cost. We now have the opportunity to be a net exporter of refined petroleum products so that we can stop exporting crude oil in favour of the more expensive refined petroleum products. It is ironic that we have been importing refined petroleum products from places which do not produce a drop of crude oil. For example, the Netherlands has an installed capacity for refining 1.2 million barrels a day. A lot of the petrol imported into Nigeria comes from there and surely, the time has come to reverse that trend and we will soon be able to do that. All we need is the will to do so. The export of refined petroleum products from Nigeria must be seen as a trend which we need to extent to the other raw materials for which we are famous; cocoa, cotton, hides and skins as well as various minerals. It is only by doing this that we can begin to build up a solid economy.

November 2, 2025
Honourable ministers

It is clear at this time that two Honourable Ministers are, to use a contemporary term, trending in the news. Their situation is such that I thought I must put Dangote and the Nigerian energy situation on the back burner this week in order to join the ministerial train or if you like, the ministerial band wagon.

In early September, I turned my attention in this column to what I described as a gathering storm. The storm was in the process of gathering steam as a prelude to causing a great deal of havoc to the nation’s university system. ASUU, the union representing Nigerian university lecturers had begun to make some decidedly ominous noises over the refusal of government to implement the provisions of the 2009 agreement which was signed by both government and ASUU representatives as far back as the year of that agreement. The agreement was signed after it had been carefully worked out by representatives of the government and a high powered union delegation. The issues discussed covered staff welfare, resuscitation of the moribund university system through adequate funding as well as issues surrounding university autonomy. For more than twenty years before then, these issues had plagued our university system within which strikes had become endemic and decay on the verge of being taken for granted. It appeared that both parties on either side of the divide were ready to stop bickering in the interest of presenting a viable university system to the nation. A system that was going to guarantee the quality of the products of that system. After that agreement was signed, we all heaved a collective sigh of relief and were prepared to get on with doing the work required to make the system work.

The agreement was signed with great fanfare but, sixteen years later we are yet to see the results of that agreement. For a start, we were sure that the agreement was going to put an end to the perennial strikes of the last twenty years but we have since found out that the lice crawling through our collective hair were still alive and active. As a result, our finger nails are still bright red with blood. All our hopes have been dashed time after time.

Having spent forty-seven of the most productive years of my life within the Nigerian university system, I cannot turn my back on it six years after retirement. As a university lecturer, I just did not go through the motions of being a university employee. My having spent thirty-one years as a professor within the system shows that I was never a passenger within it. My commitment was total and I was always aware that my achievements within it were to be my professional legacy. The inconsistencies with which I had to battle for the best part of my career however did not allow me to fulfill my potential and limited my scope as a lecturer and researcher. This is why I feel personally insulted by the totally unreflective response of the Honourable Minister of Education to the ongoing two week warning strike embarked upon by ASUU, embarked upon to remind the government of her responsibility to the Nigerian university system.

It was no secret that an ASUU strike was in the offing but the nonchalance with which the notice was treated can only be described as shameful and disrespectful. After all, a union of university lecturers should not be dismissed out of hand in the way the minister has done. According to him, his government had done everything in response to the demands of ASUU and there was no earthly reason why they should go on strike. In the first place what is going on at thís time is a two week strike. It is time limited and designed only to sensitise the government and remind her of her responsibility to a critical sector. Rather than be sensitised, the minister has responded with fury. Previous governments for all their irresponsibility in this matter did not confront the lecturers with venom and did not threaten them with the withholding of salaries first of. And in any case, the no work, no pay threat has never been able to send striking lecturers back to work. True, university lecturers have been steadily impoverished by government policies over more than three decades, the threat of stopping their meager salaries can no longer be regarded as a fail safe deterrent. After all, he who is down fears no fall. On several occasions in the past, Vice Chancellors have been instructed to open registers so as to identify those of their staff who were on strike. That measure did not force lecturers back to work. Lecturers have faced down the threat of eviction from government quarters before and maybe it is to the minister’s credit that he has not yet issued the threat of eviction as a means of forcing striking lecturers back to work. In an attempt to break the ranks of ASUU, the last government threw their support behind a renegade splinter group of opportunistic lecturers who had chosen to curry her favour by rejecting the strike option within the university system. This has not broken the ranks of the lecturers. Those government recognised stooges, registered as a competing unit by the last government, even now, claim to be hard at work but the universities remain closed for business. So much for their effectiveness as strike breakers. One cannot but wonder why successive Nigerian governments have chosen to respond, first with indifference and then fury to the legitimate demands of university lecturers.

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And yet the situation within Nigerian universities was radically different from what it is now. Back in 1972 when I graduated from the University of Ife, graduates did not choose to become lecturers. They were chosen. Such was the cynosure of lecturership positions that those chosen to undergo training to become lecturers were regarded as having been made for life. Not only did professors earn the highest salaries within the public service, their allowances and other perquisites of office put them in a class by themselves. In my generation, those of us that had the privilege of overseas study eagerly returned home to serve their respective universities. Those that were given the same opportunity a little over a decade ago have simply absconded and are now happily contributing to the development of universities abroad. They are never coming back home and why should they, when all they can expect is a tongue lashing from an entitled minister from time to time. Everything considered, the glory has departed from our universities and the likelihood of a return is slim.

The other minister recently in the crosshairs of public attention is the Minister of Works, the hard working, self styled Professor of Engineering. So many Nigerians are desirous of being recognised as professors even as real professors are skulking away in their battered ivory towers. The minister was engaged in a heated argument with a journalist who obviously thinks that if the minister was a professor of engineering, he was a professor of interrogative journalism. The sparks created in the course of their public interaction engulfed them both. My interest in this matter concerns why in this country, the Minister of Works has to be an engineer, any kind of engineer and the Minister of Health must be medically qualified. Well, this does not have to be so and is not the case in other parts of the world. Those of us who are sufficiently long in the tooth remember that the Minister of Works in Gowon’s cabinet was a lawyer and the Minister of Health was a History professor. Those gentlemen performed their jobs admirably. The Ministries of Works and Healthare full of engineers and doctors respectively. The minister is a political appointee, put there to supervise the political leanings of the ministry, to see that the workers are ideologically committed to the manifesto of the ruling party. When we see the Minister of Works parading in a hard hat, we just know that he is doing so for the cameras. The serious work on site should be left to the engineers who were employed to carry out engineering works by the ministry. If that was the case, the Minister of Works would have been spared that ordeal of trying to deal with the verbal pyrotechnics which raised his ministerial hackles to an intolerable level.

October 26, 2025
Dangote on my mind V

There is little doubt that the most important commodity within Nigeria’s economy today, is petrol followed by diesel, kerosene and lately, cooking gas. A long time ago, kerosene would have been at the head of that list, at the time when it was used to lighten the darkness which descended each day at dusk. That is talking about a very long time ago, long before independence. By the sixties, kerosene was in highest demand when kerosene stoves became available and practically all urbanites depended on it for cooking their food, in favour of using wood or charcoal. Now that more convinient and efficient gas cookers are in vogue, kerosene has taken a back seat to the other fuels. At the height of its popularity, every neighbourhood had someone who sold kerosene in bottles and could be roused at any time of day or night to take care of any emergency caused by the shortage of kerosene at some critical juncture. Later on, kerosene became available in petrol stations which from time to time were decorated with long lines of plastic containers waiting to be filled with the precious fluid in distressingly too many times of inevitable scarcity.

Now, petrol is deservedly at the top of this fuel queue because it is used as the major propellant on which the country is run. Whenever there was a shortage of petrol, the country was grounded, with long vehicle queues at any petrol station dispensing the precious fuel, usually at mercilessly inflated prices. This was the situation for a little over fifty uncomfortable years. Petrol is by far the preferred fuel for shifting all kinds of vehicles in Nigeria, with the exception of the long distance, usually articulated trucks used in the delivery of goods all around the country. The sale of the diesel used in these vehicles was deregulated many years ago and even under the notorious subsidy regime, diesel was always terribly expensive and perhaps therefore, also always available. In any case, it would have been ridiculous to have long queues of articulated lorries at petrol stations.

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Taking everything into consideration, it can be concluded that there is a high usage of petrol per capita in Nigeria. This is why the cost of living is so neatly tied to the cost of petrol per litre. Any increase in the price of petrol is reflected instantly in the cost of practically all commodities and everyone feels the pinch instantly. There is no reason why this is not so. An illustration will prove this point as it was proved to me by observation many years ago. In that instance, I saw an old lady coming from the farm with a small load of wrapping leaves. She was trying to move her leaves to a nearby urban market at a time immediately after a steep increase in the price of petrol. Transport fares had also been increased to reflect the new price of petrol. Whatever profit the poor lady was entitled to, was immediately wiped out and the only way that she could keep her head above water was to increase the price of her leaves in equal measure. This increase was in turn, passed on to the moi-moi seller who also passed it on to her customers and by so doing, put some fire under the figures for inflation, causing them to soar destructively. The converse is of course also true. A reduction in the cost of petrol will douse the flames of the inflation which at this time is devouring our collective happiness and well being.

I have no doubt in my mind that a substantial drop in the price of fuel, especially petrol, will give us the slack we sorely need, in order to breathe. The only way to get this done at this material time, is to cut the Dangote refinery the slack that it needs to bring down the cost of petrol and maybe, as an afterthought, the price of cooking gas as well. The first point that must be noted in this regard is that the Dangote refinery has the capacity to do this and more. All that needs to be done is to climb down from his back. Given the extant circumstances however, this is easier said than done. But, it has to be done all the same. This is why the signals and threats now coming out of many quarters are so worrisome. Dangote is now in this pivotal position because, more than ten years ago, he took the decísion of investing in a refinery. An identical decision could have been taken by any number of well heeled Nigerians, before and after then. But nobody had neither the foresight nor perhaps the audacity to do so, leaving Dangote in his current position of profitability and massive authority. That position is not only visible but it is also above any challenge in the near future.

We are told that Alhaji Dangote is now worth close to 30 billion dollars. That is a humongous sum of money by anybody’s accounting. Were he to spend a million dollars everyday on whatever caught his fancy, he cannot live long enough to spend more than a small fraction of this sum. That is how big it is. It would therefore be a sad negation of his privileged existence if he decided to put sheer profit before principle at this time. The only way for his life to show any purpose is to stake his huge personal fortune on the future of Nigeria. Were he to fail in that purpose, it would be a heroic failure, worthy of being told and retold all down the ages and that in itself is grace and significant historical significance. Given the trajectory of his life up till now however, it is inconceivable that he would not be successful in this respect. To what purpose would it be if he continued to pile up the dollars which can be ascribed to his name? None is the simple, straightforward answer. From this admittedly rosy position, it is ridiculous to think that his primary objective is to build up a monopolistlc control of the fuel market. It will not work anyway if only because even as we speak, there are other local refineries under construction and it is only a matter of time, possibly a number of months before at least one other refinery comes on tap to give him some real competition. It is laughable for those who do no more than import, store and then distribute fuel of whatever quality to claim that they are genuine competitors. They may be so in their heads but in reality, they are only so in their dreams. It is a waste of time to advise them to come out of their dream and set up their own refinery. They simply are totally incapable of doing other than what they are doing now, that is to collect rent on their depots and shift petrol around the country in expired trucks, many of which are incapable of passing any decent road worthiness test. Even from that point of view, they cannot be regarded as being capable of offering any competition to the gas powered trucks mobilized for fuel distribution by Dangote. We can say that with those trucks, Nigeria is moving into a modern and safer mode of fuel distribution. Even then, until fuel is sent round the country in underground pipes, Nigeria will not be classed as a country with a modern fuel distribution system. In the meantime, the use of Dangote trucks for fuel distribution must be regarded as non-negotiable both from the point of safety as well as accountability. Without due accountability, there is no guarantee that considerable volumes of petrol will not stray across our notoriously porous borders.

October 19, 2025
Dangote on my mind (IV)

Long before refined petroleum products began pouring out of the Dangote refinery, I was sure that whenever that happened, the Nigerian economy was going to receive a massive shot in the arm. I was sure that the refinery was going to change Nigeria, permanently and profoundly. After all, the planned scale of the enterprise was so large that it could take care of local demands. Not only that, it was large enough to have a great deal left over for export. If that was not a game changer, nothing else was going to clinch it. The reality of what has happened in the last two years has however clipped the wings of my soaring expectations, bringing me back to reality with a massive bump.

What I failed to add to my calculation of reality was that whilst opening the refinery was a positive, life changing event for the vast majority of Nigerians, it was bound to be seen in a negative and altogether unwelcome light. After all, a small but all powerful minority were profiting from the chaos which had governed our fuel supply mechanisms for half a century and counting. It is now clear that not taking their reaction into consideration was going to fatally screw up the equation of fuel supply in the country, even as high grade fuel was being produced right here on our shores.

The first indication of reality was that long after the refinery was commissioned, its promised products were not available on the fuel thirsty streets of Nigeria. This was not a spontaneous reaction but a contrived response to the potential availability of enough fuel to drive the nation’s economy. The actors in that area of our economy had decided to deprive our nubile waist of decorative beads in favour of total strangers.

The largest single train refinery in the world stood ready for business but crude oil, its basic raw material, was conspicuously missing. And this was, at least on paper, in a country which was still one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world. One would have thought that all that was required was to allot the required amount of fuel to Dangote in a move that was going to replace the subsidy that we had been told was being paid on every litre of petrol that was consumed in the land. It was soon clear that the NNPC had mortgaged our oil reserves and was in no position to sell oil to Dangote. The refinery was open for business but there was no local crude available, tantamount to our farmers sending their yams to Lagos to earn hard cash whilst subsisting on part of their scraggy cocoyam harvest. Dangote had to go halfway round the world to bring in the crude, large quantities of which were available in his backyard. What economic sense did it make to source for crude in turgid dollars but sell the refined products in flaccid Naira? None at all is the right answer. The Dangote refinery got going at last but the cost of buying petrol in Nigeria was hardly dented as it competed with rotten dollar denominated fuel which was still being bought in strange lands and imported into Nigeria. The leeches which had been sucking us dry for several decades, ignoring the evidence of their eyes, were insistent in their desire to ensure that it was to be business as usual. They were able to do this because they had friends in high places. After Dangote was denied the benefit of access to local crude, some standards organisation, without the benefit of any analytical instrumentation declared with faux authority that the fuel produced by Dangote was laden with high concentrations. of sulphur. This was a clear attempt to play on the fears of Nigerians that locally produced materials of any kind were inferior to imported varieties. Dangote, who had the authority of a fully functional laboratory behind him proved them wrong. These difficulties notwithstanding, Dangote began to eat away at the cost of fuel purchased from our forecourts. Availability was also increased to such an extent that fuel queues were consigned to the past. For the first time in fifty years fuel was even available over the Christmas period. To be sure, petrol was still close to five times more expensive in Naira terms than before but the cost was coming down perceptibly in what was turning out to be a win – win situation or, could be if properly managed.

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But, the situation could not be properly managed. When it became apparent that Dangote was getting on top of the situation, news began to filter out that the government owned refineries which had been silently rotting away for a couple of decades, had in the miraculous manner of the deceased Lazarus been brought back to life after the injection of massive amounts of dollars. We were informed that the refineries had undergone various tests which confirmed that they were so close to resuming their functions as to make no difference. It was to be only a matter of a few months or even weeks before Dangote was presented with a worthy competitor thereby preempting the creation of an unwanted Dangote monopoly in the oil sector. A year after these cheering news were received, the refineries are as silent as the sepulchres from which they were said to have been delivered and Dangote is still the only refinery left standing.

I was sure that a decisive corner had been turned when a year ago, it was announced that Dangote could pay for his crude supplies in Naira. True, the volume of crude supplied under this arrangement was substantially short of capacity, it was however a giant step in the right direction but the mode of this transaction was not transparent as as some dollars were smuggled into the prevailing equation but still it was better than nothing and in any case, the cost of fuel at the pump continued to inch downwards. Hope in the bright future of fuel availability broke out like a rash, to the evident satisfaction of a lot of us. That outbreak has however been shown to be premature as other challenges were raised against Mr. Dangote and his massive and ambitious project.

In the dark winter of our fuel discontent, a group of people had risen to insert themselves into the fuel supply chain. They had built massive storage facilities which received imported fuel for subsequent distribution throughout the country. They did not add a jot of value to the supply chain but were nevertheless indispensable. They were like the slave traders of old who took advantage of being situated on the coast to buy slaves from the interior to sell them on to the Europeans at great profit to themselves. Their descendants still exist among us for all they are now worth. The direction of trade has now been reversed with fuel being moved from the ports to the hinterland. Unfortunately, the reasoning remains the same, the only difference is the nature of the merchandise. Then, it was live human beings. Now, it is refined petroleum.

To pursue the slave trade analogy to its logical conclusion. Slaves were assembled at depots all along the coasts from where the slaves were loaded into ships reeking of human misery and taken across the Atlantic Ocean, to slavery in the Americas and the Caribbean region. Now, old and old ricketty petrol tankers drive up to be loaded with fuel for transport to all parts of the country. These rent seeking middlemen, llike their forefathers who resisted the abolition of the slave trade with all their might are also determined to protect their privileges to the detriment of the rest of us.

October 12, 2025
Dangote on my mind (III)

One of the highlights of the first, so-called, civilian government after our painful dealings with military rulers was the selling off of many of our joint assets to the friends, cronies and surrogates of the government that was soon to reluctantly vacate the corridors of power. In the process of gathering where they did not sow, they had injured each other severely. And so, by the time they were leaving office, the most powerful members of that government, together with their gangs of hangers-on were no longer on speaking terms. So deep were the antiparthies within and between them that today, two decades after the great falling apart, they are still in the habit of taking pot shots at each from deeply entrenched but hardly concealed positions.

On the eve of their departure from office, they somehow contrived to sell the four government owned crude oil refineries at a price which for its paltryness, does not deserve to be mentioned at this time. The buyer then was none other than Aliko Dangote, now the proud owner of the largest single train crude oil refinery in the world. This sale was,for any number of reasons, prevented from being consummated by the incoming government and the deal fell through. What has happened to those refineries since then is a catalogue of sorry history. In the end, the ownership of the refineries reverted to the NNPC for further mismanagement and twenty years later they are still swallowing huge chunks of dollars for nothing. In the meantime, the country has been suffering from an energy deficit that is wholly incompatible with development.

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Ever since 1974 when in the wake of the Yom Kippur war, the Arabs wrapped their fingers tightly around their oil pipelines, crude oil has figured prominently in global discussion about the future of the world. The immediate consequence of the Arab control of their oil was to send the price of crude oil into a steep upward trajectory. Whilst the rest of the world groaned under pressure of increased oil prices, Nigeria and other oil producing countries were floundering under the weight of the petrodollars which poured into their coffers in what appeared to be a never ending stream. Prominent among these countries was Nigeria. So much money was coming into the country that the military head of state at the time declared that money was no longer our problem but how to spend it. And how badly we spent it on all manner of baubles that caught our fancy. We spent that money with so much ferocity that it was gone within no more than five glorious years. And then, we became poor but not before we picked up a slew of intolerably bad habits which since then we have found impossible to shake off. Chief among these habits was corruption and following very closely behind was our disdain for work of any kind, not to talk about work of the hard variety. Money was to be had in government coffers and many people had unfettered access to government money, in and out of government owned facilities. True, the governments of the day made some attempt to provide some facilities for public use, it was soon apparent that government spending was no more than a smoke screen under which a lot of money was simply diverted into private pockets, to be used for the purchase of their very own domestic comfort. The result of the confluence of those effects is that the government has become an avenue for the provision of loot on a grand scale for all those who had access to it. Nowhere was this more glaring than in the oil and gas sector of what passes for the Nigerian economy. A class or entire corps of players in our economy has arisen to feed on the rest of us. These people have become so used to enjoying their criminal privileges that they will stop at nothing to protect their interests.

Throughout the period of endemic fuel shortages, the mechanisms of the oil market were under the control of the NNPC. It is the largest government owned oil company in Africa and with assets north of $150 billion, it is a powerful player in the global oil industry. Since its formation in 1977, the NNPC has assumed the role of a government within the government of Nigeria. It is that powerful and whoever is in charge of it is most certainly a person of distinction within the Nigerian power structure. To put it bluntly, this company gradually but purposefully acquired enough clout to become a law unto itself.

It is a company whose accounts were not, or indeed could not be audited for years. It operated behind a screen of opacity so that the harder you looked, the less you could see or discern. Given this situation, this company can be compared to the mafia. Everyone knew they existed but hiding under a corporate fog, their existence could not be proven. Their final cloak was provided by successive Presidents who also retained the post of Minister of Petroleum Resources. After all, with the sale of crude oil providing all the fuel that powered the economy, keeping direct control of the NNPC was crucial to the health of that economy. However this has not enhanced the performance of this company and the consequence of this has been seen in the endless queues at petrol stations all over the land, a phenomenon that had become endemic over a period of fifty years.

The last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back was when the authorities of the Central Bank, joined in the operation to sabotage the national economy. To be fair, no collusion between the bank and NNPC has been discovered but between the two bodies, the nation was brought to its knees around Christmas in 2022. As usual, there was an acute shortage of fuel but even if there was fuel, there was no money in circulation to buy the fuel with. And this because the Central Bank had withdrawn all currency notes from circulation even as new notes were being printed to replace them. A humongous sum of money was set aside for this purpose, money that could and should have been set aside for more productive ventures. This was at a time when the NNPC had contracted debts the servicing of which included money from the sale of crude oil which was not due to be pumped out of the ground for many months into the future. The country was flat broke even though political parties were campaigning seriously for support in the imminent general elections for which hopeful politicians were burning off billions of Naira as they wooed a shell shocked electorate. The government that was eventually elected rewarded the bemused electorate with the double whammy of a near five times increase in the price of petrol and the exposure of the fragile Naira to the gale force winds of the unforgiving market place. The good people of Nigeria were caught in a vicious bind from which escape has been impossible since then.

Throughout this period of discomfiture, the only light from the East was the persistent rumour of the imminence of the commencement of a refinery that was being built in Lagos by Aliko Dangote. But there was little room for hope because the building, equipping and commissioning of that refinery appeared to have taken forever to become reality. In the midst of our vast desert, it was becoming apparent that it was at best a mirage and at worst a giant hoax. After all, the project was first mooted in 2013 and due for completion in 2016. Seven years later, petrol was yet to come out of the refinery and our collective hearts sank when the NNPC, broke and broken as it was, announced that it was going to take a 20% stake in the refinery. Finally, in September of 2024, the news broke that petrol was finally coming out of the refinery and we heaved a collective sigh of relief. Little did we know at the time that the struggle for home refined fuel was only just beginning.

October 5, 2025
Dangote on my mind (II)

The elderly were venerated in pre-literate societies for several reasons, chief among them being their ability to recall events from the past and relate them to contemporary situations. Africa did not take to writing things down until quite recently which explains why old people are still held in high esteem simply for their longevity in many parts of the continent, especially in those parts where literacy is just taking root. Tucked away in the memory of such old people were events which needed to be retrieved from the past, to be of service to the present. Sometimes, such items of information were a matter of life or death and at other times, they were no more than items of passing interest. An example of this is found in Things fall apart, Chinua Achebe’s justly famous book about first contact. One episode in that novel concerned the arrival of a swarm of locusts in Umuofia, shortly after the annual gathering of the harvest. Locust invasions were a rare event, so rare that only a few long-lived individuals had lived long enough to be witness to two of such visitations in their life time. It was the wisdom of a few of the ancient survivors in their midst that made it possible for the visitation of the swarm of locusts described in the book to be effectively dealt with. There are other examples of elderly interventions which were of more critical importance to their society.

In current times when everything is sure to have been faithfully recorded somewhere, dependence on human longevity, for the sake of longevity is no longer of crucial importance as it once was. Even then, the old still have some bragging rights when it comes to reaching into the past to make a point. One of such instances must be the issue of the effect of petrol and diesel on our societal well being.

Before the magical year of 1972 nobody in this country gave any thought to the availability of petrol. True, there were only a few petrol stations giving service in any given locality but there was no time when any of them was ever out of fuel to sell. Many of them were also open for service at virtually any time of day or night. The first hint of trouble as to the availability of fuel came in December of 1972. At that point in time, two grades of petrol, super and ordinary were available everywhere with the super variety being more expensive than the other. You had a choice. During the Christmas period of 1972, the super grade fuel suddenly and for no apparent reason became unavailable. This was only noticeable to the big wigs who ran their expensive vehicles on super grade petrol. So light was the hiccup that those that were restricted to using the ordinary grade of petrol were unlikely to have noticed that anything was amiss. By the following year, the fuel situation had changed so drastically that throughout the Christmas period and well beyond, there was hardly any grade of petrol to be had anywhere. Long petrol queues appeared as if by magic and instances of people sleeping over on those queues became part of everyday existence. Unfortunately, this became an expected phenomenon which spilled out of the Christmas and other holiday periods in Nigeria and became an uncomfortable norm. Petrol sellers cashed in on this situation and the classical experience of the increase in price in periods of scarcity became the order of the day. Very soon, prices began to increase by government fiat. From 5 kobo per litre in the seventies, petrol climbed to the dizzy height of more than N 1,000 per litre at the time almost two years ago, when the scam called fuel subsidy was removed from the painfully constricted throat of long suffering Nigerians. For a period of fifty years, we suffered unbearable torture at the hand of the fuel mafia even as our need for their product increased exponentially from year to year until it became a burden which was too heavy to be borne. There just had to be a way out of that situation.

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At the height of the oil boom in the seventies, the government constructed four refineries which were supposed to keep us in regular supply of petrol, diesel and kerosene. Personally, I cannot remember if this was achieved at any time even before the refineries kept breaking down due to poor management and disdain for proper maintenance. Somewhere down the line, we have lived up to the fiction of being producers of refined petrol chemicals and became importers of these products. This was a painful paradox because we were one of the leading producers and exporters of crude oil but we could not enjoy this privilege in a world which hungered for oil as never before in human history. But we were supposed to enjoy this privilege and someone came up with the really clever idea of creating a government run monopoly which sold refined petroleum products at less than their landing cost. This made the cost of these products significantly less than it was in all our neighbouring countries. Naturally, a lot of our subsidised petrol flowed into those countries where there never were any long petrol queues as was the case in Nigeria. Whatever gains that accrued from any subsidy on refined products passed straight into the cavernous pockets of those in charge of running the subsidy scam and the smugglers who channelled the fuel into other countries. Between them, they swallowed our collective patrimony.

It is not difficult, especially in hindsight, to see that our economy was being subsidised at the expense of each one of us. Our currency situation was also in the gutter even as the crude oil which was supposed to pay for everything was being purloined on an industrial scale close to the points of extraction. So much of this oil was being cooked in makeshift kitchens in the Niger Delta region that loads of carbon particles were released into the air and breathing became difficult in many parts. The combined activities of the subsidy scammers, the smugglers and those of the cooks in the Delta were augmented with the damage inflicted on the economy by currency speculators. These were the round trippers who used their positions and enormous influence to gather hot dollars straight from the Central Bank at the official rate. These they then sold for huge piles of cold Naira. These were then processed through the Central Bank furnace, to turn them into piping hot dollars thanks also to the huge discrepancy between the official and unofficial values of the dollar.

It is not difficult to imagine that in the middle of all these, what could be called a Nigerian economy was practically nonexistent. The people who had money could not invest it in Nigeria if only because in the face of astronomical interest rates, they would have been barking mad to risk investing their money in Nigeria. They simply moved the bulk of their loot into safe havens far away as they lived high on the fat of the hog in all the fleshpots of the world. In the midst of all this, it would have been madness for anyone to think of risking 20 billion hot dollars in setting up the largest single train refinery in the world right here in Nigeria.

September 28, 2025