It is tempting to keep on lamenting and condemning the truly astonishing fact that for over six decades since oil exploration began in Nigeria, the country has relied on the oil multinationals for vital statistics on volume of oil production and consequent earnings from the commodity. But it is more positive to focus on the new, commendable initiative by the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Agency (NUPRA) to install its own flow meters on oil production facilities and pipelines in the upstream sector for this purpose.

Following the reported approval by President Muhammadu Buhari, a forensic audit of all flow stations and production volume in the sector is currently being undertaken while Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) engaged by the NUPRA for the purpose are said to be about concluding stipulated procurement processes.

The initiative could not have come at a better time.  Indeed, its speedy actualisation may turn out to be the critical saving grace for an economy on a steep fall, with drastic revenue shortfalls, escalating indebtedness and the attendant continuing decline in productivity in virtually all sectors arising from high energy costs, widespread insecurity and chronic infrastructure, among other factors.

It is sad that for years Nigeria has been unable to independently ascertain both the production volumes of oil lifted from the country and the true figures of the revenues accruing therefrom. In the cold, calculating and often amoral world of international oil business, the operators have no obligation to furnish the country accurate figures of their transactions since we opted to rely on data from their installed facilities, leading to possible inevitable loss of humongous revenues to the country over time.

This situation has particularly become unsustainable and even existentially threatening in the light of recent developments such as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Although most other oil-producing countries have been reaping huge revenues as the conflict has caused high increases in international oil prices, this has not been the case in Nigeria which relies entirely on imported refined oil products such as Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) and diesel. The consequent spike in the domestic price of PMS in particular, which continues to be hugely subsidised by government, has led to an alarming increase in the size of the subsidy, severe paucity of funds for capital development, social services as well as security of lives and property. This has continually been forcing government to resort to more borrowing even to finance recurrent expenditure.

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Matters have been worsened by a steep decline in the daily production of oil, the country’s major revenue earner, as a result of large-scale pipeline vandalisation and oil theft. It is estimated, for instance, that between January and July this year, Nigeria lost about 433,000 barrels of oil daily to oil theft, which is calculated to amount to over$43million daily, at an average $100 per barrel. Consequently, the country is unable to meet its average production quota set at 1.7 million barrels per day by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), as production fell from over 1.4 million barrels daily in January to 1.1 million barrels as at July.

While government recently contracted a private security outfit to help enhance the safety of oil pipelines in the Niger Delta and reduce the level of theft, the new move to install facilities to help the country autonomously determine the volume of its oil produced and sold by the private oil companies is no less imperative and long overdue.

This will not only be more self-respecting for us as a sovereign country, it will also help to stem the obvious fiscal haemorrhage in the sector due to underhand dealings over the years, other things being equal. The expected considerable enhancement in declared revenue earnings should also help substantially to deal more effectively with current economic challenges.

However, if adequate attention is not paid to effective monitoring of operations and institution of requisite mechanisms to enhance transparency and enforce accountability under the new system, the obvious criminal activities of the past will most likely continue as local indigenes are no less susceptible to greed and corrupt proclivities than foreign operators. This must be anticipated and preempted.

It’s a classic clash between right and mercy — the sad story of Mrs Chinenye Agu.

She has been “detained” with her new baby at Ifechukwu Hospital, Umuoji, in Idemili South local government of Anambra State, since she was delivered of her baby, via caesarian surgery, last May.  She is in her fourth month, “trapped” in the hospital, because she couldn’t pay the full fees, after service delivery.

Her story is pithy and moving.  She got a bill for N480, 000.  She paid N340, 000. She got stuck on the balance of N140, 000.  To secure the remainder, the hospital has refused to discharge her.  On the sentimental plain, that would appear harsh.  But really, it is not because the hospital is no charity and is bound to recover its costs to continue being in business.

Besides, the hospital met the patient virtually midway: not insisting on full payment before a birth surgery, knowing complications like these might follow.  So, though the craving for mercy in such cases is natural, let no one demonize the hospital for claiming its right — except those who can pay the hospital its due fees and logically close the transaction.

We are not unaware of Mrs. Agu’s dire straits, which caused the meltdown in the first instance.  Her husband, Anthony Agu, lost her livelihood while his wife was pregnant.  He was a cabbie but thieves stole his vehicle.  Now, he ekes a living as a bus boy, from which daily returns he had somewhat been making little contributions to offset the bill — more like re-filling a roaring ocean with spoonfuls of water!  Brave — but sad!

How long would such puny returns defray the N140, 000 balance?  Besides, by Mrs. Agu occupying bed and space, the hospital is hemorrhaging too.  To  secure payment for service already rendered, it has to sacrifice facilities it ought to have used to generate further return on investment. If it dares to charge for these facilities, it would be labelled as soulless.  Yet, that would be the rational business call!

The plea that the hospital should let go of mother and child, while the husband continues the gradual defrayment makes emotive sense.  But in practical value, it’s near-worthless.  Mrs. Agu’s best bet here is her appeal to good-natured people who can donate to offset her bill.  Both patient and hospital are victims here. The issue cannot be resolved by sweet sentiments that leave one of the victims in the lurch.

Still, it’s all avoidable stuff, if Mrs. Agu and her husband had taken the right steps ab initio.  There is something to the call that public hospitals be well funded and better run, with their doctors, nurses and other health service providers well motivated.

So, if Mrs. Agu had gone to a public maternity, it is doubtful if her bill, even for a caesarian section, would be anything near N480, 000.  It could be said that it was her first birth; and her decision was basically psychological, given her low trust level of public hospitals.  That is understandable but it hardly explains why she would put herself and baby in the present bind.  Since she didn’t have the cash, she should not have patronized a private hospital.

But beyond that, there is a window that could even have granted her access to private sector health care, without tearing her pocket at the critical point of need: health insurance.

Health insurance is the backbone of global health delivery.  If it had been well mainstreamed in Nigeria, Mrs. Agu and husband would have paid far less: since previous monthly premiums would have absorbed most, if not all, of the cost.

In fact, Mrs. Agu’s odyssey should drive governments at all levels to vigorously push health insurance in the informal sector: trader-wife, transporter-husband, this is a good case study on how health insurance can help the most humble of Nigerian families to pay for critical health care, without losing their dignity.

Good-natured donors should please donate to Mrs. Agu’s appeal fund so she could go home.  But the Agus — and millions of other Nigerians like them — should avoid entering into transactions they cannot fund.  Empathy is sweet and noble.  But it doesn’t ease the hard and prickly bottom line.

SIR: The passage of Maj. Gen. Alexander Madiebo, brings to memory the sad events of the Nigerian-Biafra war (1967-1970). Gen. Madiebo was commissioned into the Nigerian Army artillery as a Second Lieutenant in December, 1956, and ended up as the Commander of Biafra’s Army from September 1967 till the end of the civil war. Before the war, he served as the first indigenous Commander of the Artillery Regiment of the Nigerian Army in 1964.

During the Congo crisis, he was a member of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force deployed to Congo. He also served as the Troop Commander of the Reconnaissance Squadron during the Cameroon uprising. Following the counter-coup of 1967, he luckily escaped to the eastern Nigeria, in the water tank of a train, after hiding in the bush from the mutineers. At the beginning of the war, he commanded the 51st Brigade of the Biafran Army, before he became the Biafran Army commander in September 1967.

Obviously, he distinguished himself on both sides, and as the Commander of the Biafran Army, he showed great managerial ability, in contending with a better equipped Nigerian Army. His memoirs on the cvil war: The Nigerian Revolution and The Biafran War, is adjudged one of the most authentic recollection of the events leading to the civil war, the war itself, from a Biafran combatant, and the aftermath of the war. Unfortunately, some of the fissures that led to the civil war are still prevalent in our country.

Gen. Madiebo is perhaps one of the last veterans of the war from the Biafran side. Even though he served the Biafran cause with distinction, and was highly spoken of as a war General, he became an exemplary Nigerian citizen after the war. He was not known for throwing political tantrums, or engaging in any form of revisionism, or scare mongering to scurry attention and cheap populism. He was also not associated with any scandals or political gaming, in his long life after the war.

In essence, Gen. Madiebo embraced the Nigerian state, without renouncing what he fought for, and all through his life after the war, he never exploited the ethnic fissures for any form of advantage. His record as the head of the Biafran Army was also not tainted with scandals, neither did he fall out with the Biafran leadership, like some of his colleagues. Under his command, the poorly equipped Biafran soldiers were made to share assault rifles and bullets, and soldiers were encouraged not to shoot unless they were sure of hitting their target. He was also a good writer and his records of the war are good materials for historians.

Unfortunately, Nigeria is still bedevilled by the crisis of nationhood, and there are still many who demand that the nation should be divided along ethnic lines. There are even those who have taken up arms to achieve such purpose. Regrettably, the cries of marginalisation have not seized, and allegations of ethnic irredentism by even democratically elected government officials are still rife. Indeed, there are questions whether Nigeria has learnt necessary lessons from the tragic events of the civil war.

As the nation bids Gen. Madiebo farewell, we urge that the flaws that degenerated into the war be curbed by the citizens and the governments at various levels. One war in the life of a nation is more than enough, and everything must be done to avert a second war.

We join other Nigerians to bid the war veteran eternal rest, and pray that God grant succour to his family, friends and well-wishers. We urge Nigeria and Anambra State in particular to immortalise this distinguished son.

Seven months into the industrial action by Nigerian university lecturers, there appears to be no solution in sight. Committees have been set up many times, while neither side of the dispute appears prepared to make the critical concessions that would break the logjam.

Eminent Nigerians and academics like Wale Babalakin, Prof. Munzali Jibril and Prof. Nimi Briggs have headed panels to restore peace to the ivory towers to no avail since negotiations started in 2019. A new panel headed by the Minister of Education. Malam Adamu Adamu, comprising chairmen of the governing councils of the public federal universities and some vice-chancellors, has been set up to explore solutions to the grey areas.

It’s unfortunate that a government that assumed office on the promise that it was willing to turn things round has been unable to do so in education. Indeed, it appears the Muhammadu Buhari administration has little respect for education. Otherwise, it should not have been so difficult to demonstrate goodwill that would have impressed the university teachers to throw in the towel.

The point must be made that the lecturers are ordinarily fighting a good cause. WE must also stress that the lecturers must learn to come to terms that the university as an institution must develop ideas that can enforce its status as an autonomy. they should not always expect government to feed them. No one is proud of the state of facilities in our public tertiary institutions. The utilities are grossly inadequate for staff and students, auditoriums have become substandard and unsatisfactory, teacher-student ratio cannot make for quality dedication, laboratories lack reagents, even security can no longer be guaranteed on the campuses. the dependency on government is also contrived by government and lecturers seem to see government as the answer to all good.

These are notorious facts that require the attention of any serious government and the ASUU. Bringing in veterans in the sector like Professor Jubril Aminu, Professor Peter Okebukola and Professor Olufemi Bamiro as elders who could be accepted as neutral mediators is a welcome development.  However, the Federal Government should demonstrate manifest good faith. Over the years, government had entered into agreements it had no intention of implementing, leaving the institutions in the same or worse shape. The seven months of strike this year, coming so soon after students were made to lose one session in 2020 to a strike must count for something. There was an agreement in 2019, a review in 2020 and another that produced a Memorandum of Action in 2021, yet nothing has changed.

But, ASUU, too, should appreciate the precarious state of the economy. It would yield no good fruit if the economy is made to collapse at this point in time. We agree with President Buhari that it serves no good purpose for government to accede to all ASUU demands only to renege on them. It’s good that both sides have now seen reason to resume negotiation and meet at some point. Both parties have already agreed that salaries of university workers have to be reviewed. While the Briggs panel recommended more than 100 per cent increase, the Federal Government has proposed 23.5 per cent for staff below the professorial  cadre, and 35 per cent for professors. We hope it has not all boiled down to salaries and allowances of the lecturers.  Up till now, in spite of face-off, the public does not know the dynamic of the negotiations and who has shifted ground and at what points.

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The pledge to release N150 billion to the universities in 2023, and N50 billion in the first quarter of the year can impress no one as this government would be preparing to quit the stage then. Something must be done now, not just next year.

It’s a shame that the situation has forced some of the students out of the system and may not return. Men and women of goodwill, alumni of Nigerian universities, should wade in now to save the system. The country needs universities to produce top-level manpower,  as well as researches that could accelerate development. Unless the decline is arrested now, the expectation that  Nigeria will soon join the league of developed countries will remain a pipe dream.

Barely 18 months after it was introduced by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the Naira4Dollar Scheme seems promising. In 2021, the scheme recorded total remittances of about $2.9billion. However, it has raked in $2.4billion in the first eight months of this year alone, thereby raising hopes that, other things being equal, remittances by year-end would surpass that of last year.

CBN’s Director of Trade and Exchange Department, Dr Ozoemena Nnaji, who made the figures public at the 33rd Seminar for Finance Correspondents and Business Editors with the theme, “Policy Options for Economic Diversification: Thinking Outside the Crude Oil-Box,” organised by the CBN, noted that inflow through the scheme had been strong.

“In 2021, we were able to record $2.9 billion of cash inflows, so far this year, we have recorded $2.4 billion. So, in half of the year, we have gotten almost what we got in the year 2021”, she said. Nnaji shed more light on the remittances: “We have a component of remittances which include workers’ compensation, anyone that worked in Nigeria, even if you are a Nigerian but are paid in dollars because you work for an embassy or an international organisation, it is counted as a remittance.”

The CBN introduced the scheme in March, 2021, to encourage remittance inflows from the diaspora. It entails the giving of N5 bonus for every one dollar remitted, to serve as an incentive for both senders and recipients of money transfers. It was also designed to enhance the supply of forex and consequently ease pressure on the foreign exchange market. Initially, it was to terminate two months after; that is on May 8, 2021. Perhaps the promise that it showed made the apex bank to extend the deadline indefinitely.

Although the idea is not novel in that some countries like Pakistan, for example, have since embraced it and are reaping bountifully from the scheme, we nonetheless commend the CBN for introducing the Naira4Dollar Scheme. As they say, it is better late than never. It is the duty of every apex bank to think out of the box even before their respective countries run into forex problems.

We acknowledge the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and the attendant global economic downturn on diaspora remittances. For example, during COVID-19, diaspora remittances averaged six million dollars a week; this jumped to over $100 million a week as at March 2022, with prospects of further increase as the global economy improves. Indeed, things would have been better but for the Russia/Ukraine war.

However, now that the CBN has extended the scheme indefinitely, it should seek ways of improving on it to fetch more foreign exchange for the country. As Uche Uwaleke, a Professor of Economics and Capital Market, suggested, the apex bank should copy the Pakistani model of the scheme to increase its benefits and improve remittances into Nigeria. The Pakistani model entails a loyalty reward scheme that encourages remittances to benefit from participating companies. “It should be improved upon to increase remittances. In Pakistan for example, it has increased remittances from $11 billion to $24 billion. So, we can improve if we tinker with the current Naira4Dollar scheme,” Uwaleke noted.

It is gratifying that the CBN is not only thinking in this direction but has met with the Pakistani monetary authority with a view to seeing how Nigeria could expand the scope of the scheme to fetch it more forex. We urge the apex bank to facilitate work in this regard.

Even then, the point must be made that it is a reflection of bad governance that makes locals wait on their people abroad to take care of their immediate needs. There is nothing wrong in getting remittances from abroad because no country is an island. Countries must somehow depend on one another these days. But relocating abroad should be by choice. Going for greener pastures abroad should not be due to hardship and shrinking opportunities as we have in Nigeria.

So, the relevant authorities in the country have to take governance more seriously. More attention should be paid to social and other infrastructure. Unemployment must be tackled frontally even as measures must be devised to take the economy out of the doldrums. Insecurity is another critical area that the government must face squarely. No investor would risk coming into a country where the safety of his investments cannot be guaranteed. Nigeria needs all the forex it can muster to redeem its economy and make life more meaningful for the people through diaspora remittances. But that should be with excess capacity as in the case of India, and not at the expense of skilled manpower which is not even adequate, and which the country itself sorely needs.

Slavery and slave trade have always been a part of our heritage as a people.  Though they ended about two centuries ago, they still bear imprints in the lives of the African society from the way we eat to the way we govern.

But we tend to live in denial and this attitude accounts for why we hardly say it in public or teach it with any great fervour in our schools.

The initiative of the Lagos State Government under its helmsman, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, in renovating and unveiling the Vleteke Slave Market and Museum is an immense step forward for our appreciation of that era.

Some Nigerians have known the place as an icon of value but only in the abstract. It has also suffered immense neglect over the years, and part of it derives from the accretion of fear to probe our heritage.

Also, a certain philistinism feeds this ignorance as we sometimes think that it is merely a cynosure of the arts.

But it generates in us our sense of our own essence merely by ogling and standing in its presence with all the artefacts and rooms. We can also stare into the water as we visualise men and women, bound and helpless, their chains clattering and their groans meshed with roaring seas as they walked in split and wobbly steps into what seemed an infinity of space into the sea craft that chugged away out of their native land into the horizon.

Much of Vlekete Slave Market and Museum’s value comes from its ability to compel our imagination to see our forbears in that state. The white man, in his superior racial air powered by arms and deceptive religion, separated father from mother, sibling from sibling, and turned humans like them into chattels for profit and barbarism.

The museum will make us celebrate a mournful recall of a time when things might have been different if those who sold us civilisation were kind enough not to sell our kind and were not so civilised.

Governor Sanwo-Olu jolts us by revamping that place. Hear how the governor describes the museum: “This includes: slave market replica; replica of slave punishment centre showing the manner of treatment and inhuman punishment that humans who were tagged as slaves were subjected to as a result of their disobedience against their owners and the slave masters.”

He goes further to say that “there is also the replica of slave tunnel where slaves were temporarily kept after being captured before being shipped to their masters or owners.”

But it is not just for historical introspection alone. It will also generate interest for tourism around the world. We have heard of similar places in Ghana and Senegal, like the Goree Island.

“I strongly believe that with the refurbishment that has taken place at this slave market museum, Badagry is now better positioned as a major destination for tourism, relaxation, and history education,” noted the governor.

But he cannot do that alone. The chiefs and leaders of the community must act as stakeholders by guarding it.

We also expect that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) will show verve in this project. As Dimitri Sanga, its director of multisectoral regional office asserts: “Museums are not merely places where our common heritage is preserved, they are key spaces of education, inspiration and dialogue. They play essential role in social cohesion and sharing collective references, they also provide opportunities to foster creativity, imagination and respect for self and others.”

It is edifying that this unveiling is timed with the state’s reintroduction of the study of history as a compulsory subject in primary and junior secondary schools in the state.

Foreign airlines are giving Nigeria a cold shoulder owing to their inability to repatriate revenue realised from ticket sales in the country. A good number have pulled their flights, while others arranged for their tickets to be sold to Nigerian travellers in dollars in an affront to our currency nationalism. But those measures are a comeuppance for scarcity of foreign exchange that has seen this country defaulting on terms of Bilateral Air Services Agreements (BASAs) signed with host countries of the foreign airlines, which provide that revenue from tickets sold in naira be repatriated in forex through the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

Lately, British Airways instructed travel agencies to henceforth sell its tickets to Nigerian travellers in foreign currency. Before now, the airline and others like South African Airways (SAA) had required travellers to buy their tickets online in apparent design to make them pay in dollars, in the wake of the forex crisis that has seen $464million revenue of foreign airlines trapped in Nigeria as at the end of July, according to the International Air Transportation Association (IATA). Other carriers like Emirates Airlines have suspended flights to the Nigerian market. Emirates had announced the suspension of its flights to Nigeria from September 1, but has since recalibrated the policy to restore partial operations.

Last week, the House of Representatives Committee on Aviation asked foreign airlines that had made arrangements to sell their tickets in dollars to discontinue the idea. The panel said the policy imposed enormous pressure on intending travellers and made it difficult for people to travel. Chairman of the committee, Nnolim Nnaji, also urged foreign airlines that had taken steps to stop their operations or cut flight services to Nigeria to reconsider.

The Reps’ advocacy was obviously borne out of nationalistic passion, only that it rings hollow against the backdrop of the difficulty airlines are having repatriating their revenue. Recently IATA bemoaned the mounting obligation, with trapped funds growing from $450million in May to $464million as of July. The body urged government to prioritise allocating forex towards airlines’ revenue repatriation before more damage is done, warning that delay could incur reduced air connectivity on Nigeria. “Airlines can’t be expected to fly if they can’t realise revenue from ticket sales. Loss of connectivity harms the economy, hurts investor confidence and impacts jobs and people’s lives. The government of Nigeria needs to prioritise the release of funds before more damage is done,” the agency said on its official Twitter handle.

Amidst the trapped funds crisis, the CBN recently disbursed $265million of which $230million, according to reports, was direct forex intervention to enable airlines to repatriate some of their revenue while $35million was released through Retail SMIS auction to clear outstanding ticket sales. Aviation stakeholders were, however, reported saying much more was required from government to boost investor confidence and stave off national embarrassment that would arise from boycott by international airlines. Some stakeholders argued that government needs to enter into negotiations with the airlines on its credit worthiness and commitment to fund revenue repatriation in due course, while making deliberate effort to allocate forex at every possible opportunity. “Communication is key, they shouldn’t wait until airlines begin to issue threats,” one aviation expert was quoted in the media saying. Another stakeholder, an executive of the Aviation Round Table (ART), noted that trapped funds contravened the BASAs signed with host countries of the airlines. “Other nations will think twice before signing such agreement with Nigeria. We all know there is economic lull across the globe, but it is worrisome when government lacks the political will to show itself as credit-worthy or when it fails to communicate with its stakeholders,” the ART chieftain was reported saying.

We cannot have foreign airlines selling tickets to Nigerians in dollars, especially when it is unlikely any of the airlines’ host countries would have transactions conducted on their soil in foreign currency and in pointed neglect of the local currency. That very idea affronts on our national sovereignty. But we must also acknowledge that businesses are run for revenue to be realised and utilised, hence everything possible must be done to enable foreign airlines to repatriate their proceeds.

Besides, agreements are signed to be honoured, and Nigeria can’t afford to have its national credibility undone by the failure to fulfil terms prescribed in the BASAs with airlines’ host countries. It is not lost on anyone that times are uncommonly hard, but the test of integrity is to honour obligations even in the most dire of circumstances. This is what government must rise up to..

It is understandable that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited is anxious and expectant that the Dangote Refinery, the largest privately constructed and owned facility of its kind in the world, takes off on schedule next year as projected. The actualisation of this objective will help halt the prevalent practice of exporting crude oil and importing refined petroleum products, with negative implications for the domestic price of these imported products, as well as end the humongous amounts purportedly paid as subsidy to bridge the gap between the importation costs and the pump price.

With the current dependence on importation of refined petroleum products, for instance, Nigeria, unlike most other oil-producing nations, is unable to benefit from the sharp rise in the international price of crude oil as a result of the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war. Thus, subsidy payments have increased further in Nigeria as the rise in international crude oil prices has resulted in increased cost of refined products.

Expressing the optimism of NNPC Limited as regards the anticipated coming on stream of the Dangote Refinery, NNPC’s Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mele Kyari, has said that “NNPC owns 20% equity in the Dangote Refinery. We’re not only owning 20% equity, we also have the first right of refusal to supply crude oil to the plant. Projection for the plant’s completion is the first quarter of next year. If it does, this refinery alone, because it has the ability to produce 650,000 barrels per day capacity and different technology can crack crude in a manner that you can have more gasoline than a typical refinery”. Although a commendable and patriotic endeavour on the part of Alhaji Aliko Dangote, it is sad and unfortunate that a sovereign country like Nigeria has to wait on a private initiative to meet a critical and sensitive national need. Even then, the potential of the Dangote Refinery to help stop the importation of refined petroleum products and bring an end to the wasteful expenditure on subsidy payments widely perceived to be riddled with corruption is welcome and commendable.

However, beyond the take- off of the Dangote Refinery, Mr. Kyari was confident that with the completion of its ongoing refurbishment of its own now largely moribund refineries as well as modular and condenser refineries currently being built, “You will see that this country will become a net exporter of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS) not just to the West Africa sub-region but to the rest of the world. This will happen – the flow of supply will change by the middle of next year”. Given the country’s unsavoury experience with publicly owned and managed refineries over the years, it is pertinent to wonder if it would not be wiser and better to leave the construction and management of refineries entirely to the private sector.

But there is certainly the need for greater clarity and transparency as regards the details of the arrangement through which the NNPC Limited has acquired the first right of refusal to supply the Dangote Refinery with about 300,000 barrels of crude oil per day for the next 20 years. On what terms will this crude oil be supplied to Dangote Refinery? Will it be at a subsidised rate and if so, why? We already know that some entrepreneurs are investing in modular refineries and that happily should undercut any try at monopoly. However, why should the arrangement for the NNPC to   supply crude oil to Dangote Refinery last for 20 years? Why not for a period of five years for example, at least in the first instance? The impression must not be created that the inefficient and utterly failed public monopoly in the ownership and management of refineries is being replaced with a private behemoth that might choke others.

What we want is an efficient refining system that is not only fair but efficient. The Dangote project is a good start in a pathway forward.