The Nation Newspaper

Category: Hardball

  • Love-us-or-buzz-off mentality

    The presidency is a heady place. No, let’s retake that. Let’s say the presidency is another country or a giddying entity. And by this we do not mean Aso Rock per se, but any residence of power the world over. Unless you are a president in your own right (by this we mean a sovereign president and not any other contraption of that nomenclature, please), you are bound to be subdued, circumscribed or get big-headed.

    In some circles, it is called the aura of power; that magical, illogical power of power. It is of course buoyed by the very supposition that within this precinct, nothing is impossible; or rather, everything is possible. Herein lies the power of life, the power of death, the power of wealth; immense wealth. Indeed, every other power at all you might seek can be sourced here if you are rooted enough and know the buttons to press.

    Should you perchance have a stake or operate from within the presidential coven, you are immediately ensconced unto the realm of gods – and mind you, you don’t have any say in this. It happens in spite of your better self. Now begins the problem: it all now depends on your capacity to carry your newly acquired godhead. Again, mind you, it is a heavy load only the humble and gracious can carry.

    This happens even to the very best of us – when your fathers, mothers, teacher and hitherto superiors begin to genuflect superfluously before you then you are bound to begin to think that you have morphed into a god except that you still find yourself using the small room.

    Well, Hardball is actually interrogating a statement attributed to the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr. Garba Shehu who said in Abuja last week that the critics of President Mohammadu Buhari were favour seekers.

    Hear him: “As for those critics who are used to being settled by successive governments, with false claims to being so-called conscience of society popping up from the cupboard on and off to drive the country towards religious and ethnic polarization, they have no other motive but to rock the boat of good governance.

    “What they yearn for is to be picked out to be paid to keep quiet. The Buhari government has abolished ‘settlement’.

    First, this remark from a presidential spokesman and an erstwhile senior media man is unfortunate, ill-tempered and in bad taste. It is settled that every government needs a robust regime of critics. To therefore blackmail such critics as seeking to be ‘bribed’ is low and may well be self-indicting as Shehu himself was a strident critic.

    Finally, examples abound showing that President Muhammadu Buhari has been less than inclusive in his policies. This point must be made.

  • Rice, o compatriots!

    Rice, o compatriots — coming down to N6, 000 a 50kg bag — rice, o compatriots!

    Did you hear that dramatic whoop!  But how feasible is it?

    Audu Ogbeh, Agriculture and Rural Development minister, certainly feels it is, in a few months, if the Federal Government provides farmers with the needed incentives to cut down the stress — and cost — of production.  And he tends to have committed the Federal Government to doing just that.

    “Last year,” the minister recalled, “we procured  80, 000 threshers; this year, we will procure another 2, 500 threshers; and we are bringing in more reapers for distribution to rice farmers.”

    “The equipment,” added the minister, “will enable them to cut the rice, thresh it, winnow it and put it in sacks.  It will take away all the stress, which makes rice farming very difficult so that you can keep to the price of N110, 000 per tonne of paddy that we agreed.”

    Well, if the price of rice will fall, it certainly won’t be by happenstance!  But what are the farmers themselves saying?  Doable — if …?

    Alhaji Aminu Goronyo, national president of the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) speaking at the meeting of the Rice Processing Association of Nigeria (RIPAN), said though both RIFAN and RIPAN had cut the price of Nigerian-grown rice to between N13, 000 and N13, 500, further slicing to N6, 000 was possible.

    The conditions?  For starters, a bumper harvest.  From the abundant rains this year, that would appear a probability.

    And then?  A Federal Government-induced cut in rice growing and processing cost, by guaranteed support services.  That also came in the minister’s pledge of more threshers and more reapers.  If the cut were to come to reality, it would make good economic sense in more senses than one.

    To start with, reducing hunger is good economics.  The prospect of cheaper rice promises that.  Then, facing down and check-mating smuggling of imported rice, the major impediment of Nigerian rice taking over the market stalls; and driving down the price.  If you can banish hunger and as well banish rice smuggling, that would be a master stroke indeed.

    Hardball must also note that the Federal Government’s rice strategy, at least as enunciated by Chief Ogbeh, is food subsidy of sorts.  By making available inputs, at little or no cost to the farmer, the actual product becomes cheaper; and the market (buyer) is the winner.

    But the buyer is only one arm of the market.  The seller is the other.  So, every subsidy worth its while must not leave the farmer holding the short end of the stick.  That could demotivate and dry up the supply end of the chain.  That can only give rice smuggling renewed life.

    But far more important: subsidy has a terrible record here — unsubsidized corruption!  It was, during the swindle called petroleum subsidy.  It was, also during the racket of fertilizer subsidy.  So, everything must be done not to, in the euphoria of cheaper rice, birth another soulless bout of corruption.

    Rice, o compatriots!  But only wholesome rice without subsidy racketeering!

  • No tear for America

    If course, our sincerest sympathies go out to the mass of dead and injured individuals killed in an orgy of Saturday night shooting by a gun-happy lone ranger. One cannot help but mourn with the dead, but Hardball has no tear for the United States of America for the gruesome slaughters.

    Why, you might ask? Numerous reasons: first, this is the 24th such gun violence in the USA in one month. Second, the ‘deranged shooter’, 64-year-old Stephen Craig Paddock, has been discovered to be in possession of 42 firearms, explosives and thousands of ammunition rounds in his hotel room and home.

    In other words, why would an individual be allowed to have access to so much deadly arsenal of warfare; enough to face an army or exterminate a clan if a killer picks his spot well?

    And this is what this demon Paddock did. He took the 32nd storey room of a giant casino hotel where a three-day country music Harvest Festival was taking place. He also chose his time: a little after 10p.m. when a country music superstar and entertainer of the year was performing to a crowd of about 22,000 revellers.

    And from his vintage position he opened fire into the night crowd and it could have been a dress rehearsal for Armageddon as he fired rapidly into the roil of bodies. What manner of a tragic animal is this? It would be interesting to see his countenance as he executed his infernal night blood fest.

    From all accounts, Paddock is a White supremacist whose first love is probably guns and other instruments of death. It is uncanny he chose what may be a country music crowd which again, must have been a predominantly White show. He lived in a posh and again predominantly White community.

    Paddock’s house is said to be set in a prime spot in the community high on a plateau, with vistas overlooking the city and a neat, well-tended front yard filled with cactuses and desert bushes.

    A well healed man said to be a retired accountant who owned nearly every good thing of life including his own planes. He’s probably a member of the powerful lobby – National Rifle Association (NRA), which has continued to rebuff and frustrate any attempt to control indiscriminate gun ownership and usage in the USA.

    Hardball would, therefore, be wasting his tears if he as much as shed one for America which loves her liberty to own deadly weapons more than save lives. At least 30,000 people die from violent gun attacks as happened last Saturday in Las Vegas. And over 100,000 are shot in other related gun murders, suicides, assaults, etc.

    Even US President, Donald Trump was flippant: “ We will be talking about gun laws as time goes by,” was all he could muster. He too dares not take a stand. Why on earth then would anyone cry more than the bereaved?

  • Hail the latest victim, Mama Peace!

    Folks, the latest  victim in town sniggers — they are persecuting me, sniff-sniff, because of my vigorous support for my husband.  Big deal!  Will any rigour ever come out of the House of Jonathan?

    In a media statement just released, spokesperson for Dame Patience Jonathan, former Nigerian First Lady (what a blight on that honorific office!), rolled out the latest jeremiad from the House of Jonathan.

    Patience is being “persecuted” by Ibrahim Magu, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) czar, claimed Belema Meshack-Hart, her spokesperson, because of her doughty support for former President Goodluck Jonathan’s presidential cause.

    “One thing is clear:”, Meshack-Hart wept, on behalf of principal. “No matter what they do to Mrs. Jonathan, she will continue to stand by her husband, the father of her children, even if it means paying the supreme price with her life.”

    How sweet and heroic!

    Still, is someone seriously lexically challenged here?  Yeah right — Patience supported her husband to the hilt.

    But only in the sense of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, driving her tragic husband, the otherwise goodly Macbeth, first to commit regicide, then to destroy himself, en route to the evil Lady Macbeth herself running amock!

    Support indeed!  If there indeed was a single person accountable for Jonathan’s presidential doom, the person was Patience, his bombastically uncouth wife.

    Nigerians still recoil at her physical and lexical savagery, at the dawn of the Chibok girls kidnap tragedy.  Her Imperial Majesty, Dame Jonathan would rather go on an empty ego trip, instead of showing compassion, or even empathy, for the hurt Chibok mothers.

    Then the little issue of Bayelsa “permanent secretary”!  That was a national record in infamy, sitting Abuja-based First Lady as Bayelsa “permanent secretary” — and proudly in absentia too!  What do you call that — (un)presidential browbeating?

    Well, her husband, the president, was too weak and effete to say no.  He merrily — though gutlessly — framed his presidency as that of “anything goes”, as someone said of the Nigerian Army of the Babangida era. Then the rubbish she spewed during 2015 electioneering!  It was an electioneering equivalent of suicide bombing!  Little wonder: that effectively bombed her husband out of office, the  first president of Nigeria to be thus electorally ousted — good riddance!

    And the alleged graft and sleaze thereafter, attached to her person!  That was a fitting climax in infamy!  And to think, from media reports, she had even flirted with outlawry, reportedly cleaning off EFCC marks on some frozen property — the law and dire sanctions be damned!

    Hardball thinks Dame Jonathan can do better to draw pity to herself and her doomed cause.  Victim indeed!

    If there indeed are victims here, they are the millions of the Niger Delta disinherited and dispossessed, driven into further penury by the recklessness of the Jonathan Presidency.

    But the gravest evil of it all is the satanic grandstanding of “persecution”!  Again, if there is any persecution, the victims are the Niger Delta poor — and they should know their real traducers!

    Something is terribly wrong with the Nigerian DNA — to tolerate this level of brainless cant.  Havoc-wreakers of Jonathan era should be cooling their heals in the can, not appealing to dumb pity.

    Victim, indeed!

  • ‘President’ Fayose: preposterous and insouciant

    Nigeria is in a preposterous time with shall we say, mainly preposterous people at the helm of affairs pretending  to lead. How did the largest and indeed richest black nation on earth  come to this preposterous  pass. Well, dear reader may well be wondering as well why Hardball  is seemingly preposterously  enamored of this longish adjective? Could it be that he just cottoned on to the word recently and it’s become a faddish accessory to his writing?

    Not by a nit. Not if you understand the matter of the day and the preposterousness of it. Now let’s bite into the issue thus: the word preposterous is an adjective that qualifies a person or thing completely devoid of wisdom or good sense. The word is synonymous with absurdity, irrationality, nonsensicality and foolishness, among other such disagreeable units of language.

    Now you can discern why this word enjoys some level of pre -eminence today: a man who has governed a state for about eight years now  wants to be president of his country. This is a legitimate and rightful desire. But if such a one in governing  his state, was unable to  carry out the most basic function of paying his workers their monthly wages then you would agree dear reader, that it is most preposterous, and an absurdity of the worst kind that such a fellow would  flag off a multi-billion naira presidential campaign.

    Now here is the story: Governor Ayodele Fayose of Ekiti State last week initiated  an elaborate campaign to contest for the presidency of Nigeria come 2019. He is of course within his right as noted above, to do so even though we may quarrel with his timing and costs.

    But the real issue however is that Gov. Fayose has been unable to pay his civil servants promptly since he returned for his second term over two years ago. Inability to pay salaries may even be understood or excused but what Hardball cannot stand is Fayose’s insouciance. Broken down, this word means indifference, casual unconcern and nonchalance, among others.

    During a television interview last week, Fayose was challenged about the lapses in the wages of his workers and he had answered that he owed ONLY four months arrears. If you thought that was preposterously insouciant, hear Mr. Ade Adesanmi, chairman of the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC), Ekiti State Chapter: “As we speak, the civil servants are owed five months’ salary arrears; local government workers, eight months salaries; and institutions like College of Education, Ikere, College of Health Technology, Ijero and Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti are owed seven months’ salaries.”

    Nothing more to add to this preposterous situation than to close with these words from a former governor, Orji Uzor Kalu: “In good conscience, if you are a governor collecting N1 billion as security vote (monthly), without paying salary, you are a CRIMINAL.” Emphases Hardball’s.

    On this premise, a “criminal” should never be president abi?

     

  • Salami—and they say integrity isn’t everything?

    Remember Justice Ayo Salami, the jurist the Jonathan presidency loved to hate, simply because his immaculate integrity sharply rebuked the blotchy blots that earned the Jonathan era its epochal notoriety?

    Well, the rampaging fires of that opaque regime moved to consume and subdue Salami’s placid waters of quiet but stubborn principle; even as the jurist stood, alone and naked, before the so-called federal might.

    Well, Jonathan and gang hounded Salami, then president of the Court of Appeal, out of office.  His crime?  For presiding over a court that sacked one-two-three-four Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) governors, in Edo, Ondo, Ekiti and Osun, for stealing the vote; and reinstating the rightful winners.

    That high-wire plot involved Justice Aloysius Katsina-Alu, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) who suborned the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the get-rid-of-Salami-by-all- means-necessary plot.  Even when when CJN Dahiru Musdapher later clear Salami of any wrongdoing, returning the suspended Appeal Court president to his post became a mission impossible, till his term elapsed.

    Well, that has turned a Pyrrhic victory, for the corps of conspirators.

    For starters, on the institutional scale, the NJC plowed from its Olympic height of reverence, a body once even touted as near-almighty arbiter, to help install a fair and credible electoral chief, after Maurice Iwu had dragged the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into the thick mud of infamy.  After the Salami affair, NJC shed its slough of immaculateness, exposing yet another chamber of unending hustling and intrigues.

    But more satisfying on a personal scale, Justice Salami is back, as trusted ombudsman to certify NJC’s new anti-corruption exertions as wholesome.  It is true as they say: he who laughs last, laughs best!  It is another triumph for integrity, in a society that was sinking without trace in its ruinous opacity.

    For this, kudos to CJN Walter Onnoghen.

    Which brings the discourse back to the integrity question.  In not a few circles, particularly among sour-grapers, whose world of free-loading has since collapsed with President Muhammadu Buhari’s fierce anti-corruption war, is to play the supercilious camel and piously declare: integrity isn’t enough!  Really?

    In 2015, Jonathan and gang, no thanks to endless looting, had brought the Nigerian ruling class to the end of their tether.  The “stupid” and docile masses were already seeing what they were not supposed to see; and saying what they were not supposed to say!

    Only one man, PMB bailed out this troubled ruling class.  His tool?  His shining armour of probity and integrity.

    Under PMB, agencies hitherto the bastion of sleaze, are beginning to post in the government coffers what they should.  It started with the Nigerian Customs Service.  Then, of recent, the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB), and  the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA).  Other things being equal, others may soon follow suit.  And still, no rapid overhauling of the opaque Nigerian system, beyond the Treasury Single Account (TSA).

    Even CJN Onnoghen, who started out with the body language of understanding, if not outright excusing, a judiciary in the eye of the storm, appears changing tack.  His crowing symbolism: the return of Justice Salami!

    So, integrity isn’t everything?  You can tell that to the marines!

  • BA and Miss Joannes’s backhanded compliment

    What on earth was Miss Joanne Wickenden thinking of when she made that video? And why in goodness name would she upload it, stirring the denizens of the internet and getting herself fired?

    Miss Wickenden was until a few days ago, a hot, pretty, feisty, English air hostess with British Airways. She was apparently a regular on the highly lucrative Nigeria route.

    Last weekend, she had been logged to fly the Nigerian route once again and in what appeared a mixed feeling of high and low, she took to the social media to record a minute-long video:

    “All the Nigerians are gonna be there like gimme Coca Cola, gimme beef, why you have no beef left? I want beef. And I’m just gonna be there like, ‘sorry sir, we ran out of beef.’

    “All the Nigerians are gonna be there asking for f****** upgrades because they haven’t got enough leg room because their BBCs (term for black male genitals) are in their way,” she said and uploaded.

    Interpreted: Miss Wickenden did not regret working weekends but she worried about spending it tending to unruly Nigerian passengers who are insatiable. If she could not enjoy her weekend splash in her civilized London, why did good fortune not fly her to civilized climes, she seemed to bemoan.

    Young Wickenden apparently did not understand the import of her comment otherwise she would not have posted it. The poor British lass didn’t realize she was making a racial jibe at Nigerians; typecasting them as unruly, demanding and wearisome.

    But more significant, she was not schooled enough to understand that Nigeria is perhaps BA’s most lucrative route  which the airline has been milking for nearly a hundred years.

    BA’s HR team failed to tell her that without the Nigerian passengers she made to deride, BA would probably fly into a serious turbulence. It is cheap to sack Miss Wickenden but BA was lax in properly orienting their staff.

    True, Nigerians are boisterous people and this sometimes lapses into the realm of unruliness but we are also a footloose people and we burn good money. Is it not said that a man puts his mouth where his money is?

    This explains why unlovable as we may be, most airlines of the world cannot do without Nigeria. Not even our attitude, lousy facilities and miscreant officials would stop them. Name them: BA, KLM, Lufthansa, Air France, Emirates, Ethiopia, EgyptAir, Maroc, Kenyan, etc.

    They are all here ravaging Nigeria’s rich air travel treasure. A country that ought to be Africa’s air hub is just there merely shoveling huge ticket sale returns (forex) to other countries. And they insult us to boot. Pity.

  • Romantics beware!

    oruba romantics, whose fanciful solution to Nigeria’s crisis of nationhood is the creation of a Republic of Oduduwa, would do well to observe the “neo-Kiriji War” going on between two neighbouring Yoruba states, Ondo and Osun, now latterly escalated in a third, Ogun.

    The opening shots boomed at Akure, Ondo State, during the Ondo public hearing on restructuring, organized by the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    Bola Ilori, Ondo native but commissioner for Regional Integration in neighbouring Osun, stepped outside the venue of the hearing to have a media interview.  Before you could call “Bola”, or utter “Ilori”, the thugs had come descending on him, mugged him black and blue, and made a yawning rag of his clothes.

    The thugs’ grouse?  That Ilori had the audacity and temerity to show his face at Akure, claiming to be an APC partisan — the same place he had led the campaign thrust of the Alliance for Democracy (AD) candidate during the Ondo gubernatorial election, which APC candidate and sitting governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, SAN, won.

    Ilori had fingered a top official of the Ondo government behind his assault, a charge which the other party has denied.

    But virtually before this bout of accusation and counter-accusation ended, another theatre of war had opened in coastal Ogun State.  It was a football match, in Ijebu Ode, between Ondo’s Sunshine Stars of Akure and Osun United, based in Osogbo.

    Well, Sunshine dimmed United, with two un-replied goals.  But that wasn’t the story, for in sports one side would win and the other would lose.  The sad news was that the “war” that started Akure, had continued in Ijebu-Ode!

    It could be logical to hold that since Osun United lost the match, their bad-tempered supporters and bad losers just descended on the victorious side.

    But then, the Osun side also regaled everyone with pictures of their vandalized buses, as part of the post-match fracas at Ijebu Ode.  This is a very unfortunate development, especially for a region that fancies itself the champion of restructuring, regionalization, regional integration, and allied buzzes.

    In pursuing their re-federalization advocacy, not a few went emotively overboard, telling themselves the South West was better off carved out as “Republic of Oduduwa”.  Since the Yoruba were the best to ever come out of Obatala’s nativity mill, for Olodumare’s vital breath of life, the moment the Yoruba leave Nigeria, their land would transform into instant paradise.  Some dream!

    Now, the Ondo-Osun tango is not between the Lagos-Ogun coastal elite, and the up-country Yoruba folks they, with utter condescension, dismiss as “ara oke” (up-country denizens).  It is rather within the “ara oke” themselves, up-country fellow code be damned!  Is that the sheer el-dorado that awaits the beatific Oodua Republic?

    Nigeria has its own issues, many of them grave and grievous, which must be addressed fast for the country to make progress.  But the solution is certainly not in ethnic enclaves, where former Nigerians would suddenly become angels, that would live happily ever after.  That is sheer fantasy.

    Balkanization cannot solve the Nigerian problem.  Only an inclusive and productive federal arrangement can.  That demands punishing thinking not luxurious emotions, that dream up Oodua, Biafra or even Arewa republics.

    Let Ondo and Osun stop this show of shame.  But it is living proof that disintegration, by ethnic escapism, is no quick fix to current Nigerian problems.

  • Of leadership, ethnics and laggards

    Two cases, from two different government agencies, with rather unusual repatriation into Federation coffers, beam the subject on effective leadership, as driver of sound results.

    Take JAMB, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, which conducts ranking examinations into; and serves as clearing house for, Nigerian tertiary educational institutions.

    Is-haq Oloyede, sitting registrar/CEO of JAMB and Dibu Ojerinde, his immediate predecessor, are both professors.  Yet, under Oloyede, JAMB has posted a jumbo repatriation (called operation surplus),  after its first round of examinations under Oloyede’s tenure, with a record N5billion; up from the N3 million highest returns, under previous administrations.

    What could have happened?  The implementation of Treasury Single Account (TSA) which the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency initiated but lacked the guts to implement?  The mainstreaming of the war against corruption, a cornerstone of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency?  Or just a medley of reasons?

    Whatever the reasons, it is salutary Oloyede, despite his bad media image from his Taliban-like running of the University of Ilorin as vice-chancellor, has earned due plaudits for his stellar achievement.  Leadership!

    Marine cash cow, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), which post-Jonathan era probe suggests could be fairly charged for financial opacity, offers a rather gripping parallel.

    Dakuku Adol Peterside, present director-general, took over from Patrick Akpobolokemi, who took over from the ousted Timi Omatseye, during the roiling Jonathan years.  These are names of the southern minorities, who gained some form of economic ascendancy, under President Jonathan.

    Yet, despite that cultural affinity, NIMASA under Peterside has posted humongous returns, in its first 13 months (March 2016-April 2017).  According to Kemi Adeosun, Finance minister, as quoted by a front page report The Nation of September 25, NIMASA repatriated, into the Consolidated Revenue Fund (CFR) N9.975 billion and also more than US$ 38 million, in 13 months; thus greatly boosting the federation’s treasury.

    The performance in 2015, with five months under Jonathan?  N2 billion (in local currency) and US$15 million.  Between N9.975 billion and N2 billion, there is a gulf.  So is, between US$ 38 million and US$ 15 million.

    So, what has changed — the same company, the same ethnics, the same operating environment?  Again, leadership!

    While we insist on a better accounting structure (TSA, as example) we must never forget the crucial centrality of the human factor — leadership.

    That could just make the difference between star performance (as JAMB and NIMASA are becoming under Buhari) and laggards (as they both were under Jonathan) — same company, similar ethnics but different leadership.

    Overall moral?  Leadership is key.

  • NNPC’s will-o’-the-wisp

    The nation’s oil giant, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, has always remained a strange empire which operates only in strange ways. Hardly any salutary reports waft out therefrom; neither are they given to doing any exploits to inspire the citizenry in the manner of great oil giants the world over.

    On the contrary, NNPC is a heart-breaking conglomerate known for huge glass-and-concrete edifices and seemingly adept at dissipating national resources. A couple of examples will suffice here lest Hardball is accused of being on a mission to malign.

    One, gas flaring in the oil-producing Niger Delta has been going on (some billowing non-stop) for about three decades, damaging the people and their environment. Only NNP could achieve this feat for so long. Then there is the strange matter of rechanneling foreign exchange earned from export of crude oil back abroad through the massive importation of petroleum and petrochemical products.

    The list of our huge petroleum products import is long but here are some: PMS, diesel, kerosene, fuel oil, aviation fuel and various grades of polypropylene products for the production of plastic materials. The reason we hurriedly ship back forex to foreign lands where we ship our crude oil is because for over three decades, our NNPC has been unable to manage our refineries nor build new ones.

    In fact, the long retinue of big men may have given up on that most arduous of tasks of refining business. They are now hoping and praying fervently that Dangote Refinery would come on stream on schedule so as to wipe away the veil of shame that has covered their face over these decades.

    But all these are stale reports which have been with us for decades; why would Hardball begin to rake over an old wound? Well this one is provoked by another NNPC boondoggle venture it says it has started a process that will lead to the exploitation of oil and gas in the sokoto basin, northwest of Nigeria.

    The first instinct of any knowledgeable reader of this report is to laugh his head off. After a good laugh, the fellow would proceed to throw a few posers at NNPC.

    First, has NNPC successfully carried out any major project?  No. NNPC has supposedly search for oil in the Chad basin (northeast) for about 25 years without result: how much has it spent so far on the wild geese chase? What capacity does NNPC have to drill for oil? If truly there was oil in the Sokoto and Chad basins, how come no foreign oil giant showed interest all these years?

    It’s a strange place, this NNPC