Thoughts on an Ibadan sojourn II

On a flight to Ibadan a few days before the New Year, my thoughts were principally on the long queues of motorists I witnessed on the way from my house in Wuse 2, Abuja to the airport, all waiting patiently in the fuel stations. The queues were a new phenomenon at least in the life of these new dispensations. We honestly thought that the queues were a fluke and would disappear anyway. When I wrote the article I still held out hope that come the New Year the government would overcome the crisis. At least that was the line government officials kept repeating to the country and of course there were indications of that when the queues started disappearing in Abuja and Lagos, though there was no changes outside the two cities. 

Even in Abuja it became something like a ding-dong affair; sometimes there was a queue and a times there was none. But in the whole vastness of the country there was openly a fuel shortage leading to sellers in many parts ignoring the official price. In most part of the country petrol was selling at least beyond 200 Naira – some mileage above the official price. In the petrol stations where the official price as enforced, motorists spent days and nights queuing to obtain the product.

M T Usman has followed this column closely. Having graduated in 1974 and owned a car the following year he was just on the spot when fuel scarcity started making inroads into our consciousness. I found the piece he sent me a compelling contribution to share with my readers. The poignant question he asked at end of the piece is food for thought. Please read on:    

“The vastly increased tempo of economic activity that followed the end of the Civil War meant that the rehabilitated and expanded Shell-owned refinery in Port Harcourt could not fully provide the energy needs of the country. The military government of General Yakubu Gowon therefore arranged for the refining of Nigeria’s crude oil in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago; we paid refining and shipping costs. The Nigerian National Oil Company – NNPC’s precursor – was just being set up and the construction of new refineries had to await the take-off of the 3rd National Development Plan 1975-1980. Gowon’s simple solution has since then grown more complex in the hands of succeeding administrations: there was the crude oil swap, the offshore processing arrangement (OPA) and today’s direct sale purchase (DS-DP). Along the line his government introduced the uniform pricing for petroleum products to equalise energy costs countrywide, as incentives for manufacturers to set up industries in the hinterland.

The coming on-stream of the new refineries at Kaduna, Warri and Port Harcourt provided respite from the regular fuel shortages that dogged the country, though marketers and officials still contrived to cause scarcity during the festive seasons. During Babangida’s regime the issue wasn’t fuel shortages as such, but government’s search for increased revenue at the time of falling oil revenues. There were therefore regular price increases occasioning huge public protests that were sometimes violent. Remember government argument that a bottle of Coca-Cola was more expensive than a litre of petrol?

That was also the period when a cabal took hold of the petroleum industry, sabotaging local refining in favour of import. Maintenance was neglected even as fraudulent TAMs were undertaken; there was the allegation that the management of one of the refineries stockpiled enough spare parts for TAM to last a century!

Nigeria’s management of petroleum products supply has steadfastly skirted round the issue of local refining to satisfy domestic needs at whatever is considered appropriate price(s) – whether that includes subsidy or not. We keep re-inventing the wheel, as in the consideration being given to what the Minister of State for Petroleum Dr Kwachikwu called ‘plural pricing’ model to address the current supply crisis.

General Babangida’s administration tried variable pricing for different off-takers of fuel – commercial as against private vehicles. It didn’t last long for obvious reasons – cheating and manipulation. Allocation of forex at preferential rate to fuel importers will suffer the same abuse.

Government at the highest level must bear the greater part of the blame for the current crisis. The supply system is its own creation, it ‘owns’ the products and must act as the bulwark against the fuel sharks its officials rail against. Nigerians have shown uncommon patience.

Government must commit to fixing its refineries within a given time frame, preferably to coincide with the coming on stream of the Dangote refinery to thereby achieve self-sufficiency. They can be sold as growing concerns, and deregulation and subsidy removal effected.

Fuel scarcity first reared its head in this country in 1974, at the time one’s contemporaries were acquiring their first cars. Our children and their children were born under this spectre – is it going to outlast three generations? 

THE FOUL MOUTH IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Due to the United States of America’s standing in the world political ranking, one had never been able to ignore its leaders and their utterances. Like many others I followed the last presidential elections in the United States closely and was heavily disappointed when candidate Donald Trump won. Nothing personal, but I had the impression that Trump didn’t have the required political savvy to lead a world power like the USA. I found his utterances during the campaigns that tended to abuse ethnic minorities appalling and his support for causes that were patently right wing particularly his unilateral declaration to uphold Israel’s bid to wrench Jerusalem as its capital without a Palestinian-Israel peace deal off-putting. 

I thought he would never be as bad as Ronald Reagan, who was US President 1981-89 and George W Bush, 2001-09. In fact in his very first year he proved he was worse. He continued to make even more foul utterances that tended to divide not only the United States’ community but the world at large. The widely-reported derogatory remarks on certain countries he made at a recent meeting with US lawmakers to discuss immigration policy has been receiving world-wide condemnation. 

At the meeting, he was reported to have asked, ‘why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?’ The President was said to be referring people from Haiti, El-Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and African countries. In fact another source at the meeting quoted the President specifically lamenting, ‘why do we want all these people from Africa here? They are shithole countries – – – we should have more people from Norway’. These vulgar remarks coming from the President caused uproar in the US itself particularly among his members of the Senate and House of Representatives. The US Ambassador to Panama, John D Feeley resigned in protest.

The countries affected responded as strongly as they could. On our behalf here in Africa, the African Union (AU) made an appropriate response along with South Africa. The Governments of Ghana, Senegal, Botswana and Somalia have also summoned US diplomats to demand for explanations. There were also condemnations from the United Nations and many European countries. Even the United Kingdom distanced itself from these trump’s remarks. 

However the strongest words came from the Latin American countries. The one I really admire came from former Mexican President Vincente Fox. Writing on his Twitter handle, he said, ‘your mouth is the foulest shithole in the world. With what authority do you proclaim who is welcome in America and who is not? American greatness is built on diversity, or have you forgotten your immigration background, Donald’? Phew!