From all indications worldwide, the era of the petroleum boom is over. The era started in the opening years of the last century, the years of the great discoveries that have shaped the modern world – namely electricity (and its applications in lighting, radio, television and, ultimately, the computer), the internal combustion engine (and its applications in automobiles, trains, aeroplanes, power-driven ships, power-driven production machines, etc), various chemicals, and others. Petroleum was discovered as the best source of fuel for the internal combustion engine, and it rapidly became a very huge factor in the economy of the world. Countries that could produce the crude oil found themselves awash in cash. Nigeria joined this highly favoured league of countries gradually in the years after Nigeria’s 1960 independence. By the 1990s, Nigeria was one of the leaders of the league.
Even in the most euphoric years of the petroleum boom, there were always voices warning that the boom was not likely to last long. Some geologists thought that the amount of oil below the surface of the earth was finite – and that there would, someday, probably soon, be no oil left to mine. At the same time, developments in technology increasingly indicated that alternative sources of energy would soon begin to compete with petroleum – and might soon knock petroleum from its throne as the world’s king of energy sources. Almost daily, there have been, throughout the past many decades, bigger and bigger news of the growth of these alternative sources of energy – solar, wind, new applications of electricity, super-batteries, etc. In various countries, engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses have been hurrying to take advantage of the changing paradigm. In country after country, leaders and policy makers took steps to re-align their countries’ economies to these growing changes.
But, unfortunately, the rulers and policy makers of our country, Nigeria, did not respond to the changes. They were so overwhelmed by the enormous wealth coming from crude oil that hey continued to build everything on the hope in crude oil. Those who controlled the power of the Federal Government resolved to themselves that they only must control the crude oil and all its in-flowing ocean of cash. From that they soon arrived at the decision that the Federal Government must control all resources – minerals, coastlands, lands along rivers, Value-added Taxes, and even the management of the exports of agricultural products such as cocoa, groundnuts, palm produces, gum Arabic, etc. Gradually, federal power inculcated inefficiency into the management of all these resources. Nigeria almost totally disappeared as an exporter of some of these agricultural products. Our farmers who used to earn fairly good incomes from their produce became widely pauperized. To be able to accumulate all these resource control at the federal centre, our federal rulers gradually created smaller states (and without any real principles), so that the states would be impotent entities amenable to federal control and manipulation. State and local initiative and energy in development declined sharply, and poverty became the lot of most Nigerians. Meanwhile, the endless ocean of cash in the control of the federal rulers became an object of greed and rapacity, and our country became the victim of perhaps the world’s most vicious culture of public corruption.
The outcome now is that the coming of the long-prophesied end to the petroleum bonanza has found our country in a terrible situation. Our present rulers find themselves in conditions that nobody could have imagined only a few years ago. The price of oil has declined from over $110.00 per barrel to about $30 in only one year. Worse still, various conditions in the world oil market are edging the Nigerian oil out of the market. The leading buyers of Nigerian oil are no longer buying our oil, and the ones that replaced them for some time are also moving away now. Even when we offer to sell at discounted prices, we are not succeeding in getting reliable buyers. It is rumoured that even our federal ministers are not being paid their basic salaries and allowances, and that funds for the implementation of ministerial duties are simply not available. The drastic decline in foreign exchange earning is forcing our Naira to decline incredibly, and this is causing food prices and other prices to rise dangerously in our marketplaces. Altogether, we have created the conditions that appear now to be likely to push our country into very serious problems.
When one looks at this whole situation, one must wonder about our rulers. Is it that they have been incapable of seeing what the rest of the world has been seeing in the petroleum economy in the world? Or is it that they saw it but just didn’t have the innate ability, or the basic love of their country, to respond as needed? As this problem has approached closer and closer, how have our leaders been able to give most of their time to stealing and stowing away the large amounts of money that we have been reading about in the press in the past few weeks? On the whole, what kind of country is ours?
There is a small desert emirate named Dubai in the Middle East. Like most parts of the Middle East, Dubai is rich in oil. When their oil bonanza began to reach a peak in the 1970s, their rulers were, of course, elated about the new oil wealth, but they were also mindful about what informed voices were predicting about petroleum in the world – namely, that the petroleum boom was not likely to last very long in Dubai. And so they paid attention, and began to evolve policies – policies that would use the oil money to build Dubai into a rich land that would still be wealthy and strong after the oil boom would have ended. Looking at the oil boom and the predictions, their foremost leader of the time, Sheik Rashid Al Makhtoum, is said to have made the following strange statement: “My grandfather rode a camel. My father rode a camel. I drive a Mercedes. My son drives a Land Rover. His son will drive a Land Rover. But his son will ride a camel”. What he was saying is that in the traditionally poor landof Dubai where his forebears had ridden camels, the oil boom was making it possible for him and his son to ride sophisticated cars. It might also make it possible for his grandson to ride similar cars. But if Dubai’s rulers did not use the oil money sensibly to build a prosperous Dubai, the oil boom would end and his descendants would return to riding camels.
Al Makhtoum saw the oil wealth as a brief blessing that would soon end; but that could be used to build a Dubai that would be rich for a long time in the future. In contrast, Nigerian rulers saw the oil money as a tool to make themselves rich now, while leaving Nigeria unchanged. What would happen to Nigeria after the oil boom has not concerned them. The difference is staggering. Dubai’s leaders designed programmes that would use the oil money to make Dubai rich in tourism, shipping, mass communications, and finance. Today, Dubai is a glowing gem of the earth, and folks from all over the world want to go there for one reason or another. Nigeria is the quintessentially poor country and, for the most part, Nigerians are the proverbial “wretched of the earth”.
