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The title of this week’s presentation may be examined as thus “Nigeria” and “crude oil”. Nigeria is defined as Nigeria, my country, a wonderful African country. Crude oil, otherwise called petroleum, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons and is found in geological formations. Taken from a place of intense heat and pressure. It is so ugly looking in colour but so devastatingly harmful; destroyed the groundnut business and industries in Nigeria; it rendered the cocoa industry useless and made the oil palm refineries unprofitable. The same crude oil is responsible for all the coups and civil war.
It killed Saro Wiwa and many others and made the farmlands especially in the oil-producing areas unfarmable.
It has killed the fishing business and made the unity of Nigeria a distant memory and the fragile political structure is being threatened.
A few years ago, at a dinner organized by Dele Cole, one-time MD of Daily Times, to honour the visiting President of Rwanda who is also the current president, I was honoured with an invitation to the dinner and there were only 20 of us invited. In Dele Cole’s speech, which was applauded, he described the oil industry as a curse to the nation but by the time he finished the President of Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, replied and he prayed for the curse of crude oil to be directed to Rwanda. In his heart, I guess he believed there was no curse because other countries have done well with their crude oil. We now examine some of the evils the curse has brought to other countries. And the attributes of this vice may make one wonder if it was drawn from the depths of hell or earth.
The United Kingdom
i. Made Norway and Britain to amass sovereign wealth
ii. Allowed them to pay for mass unemployment
iii. Opened their eyes to the effect of carbon emissions and diversification
Kuwait
i. Has developed welfare state.
ii. Education is free and compulsory.
iii. Low infant mortality.
iv. Medical care is free.
v. Life expectancy is 70.
The above countries are quite old, and small and have had oil discovered since 1938, so let’s examine others within our own timeline. The evil eye must be a recent hex because countries that started exploration as far back as 1908 have escaped but we the countries that came after, got what ought to be a blessing as a curse. So let’s further examine the countries that started exploring in 1966.
United Arab Emirates
This comprises the Gulf countries such as Iran, Iraq and Dubai. From these countries we can also see some curses on them:
i. Has bulk of money that comes from the production of goods and provision of services related to petroleum, aluminium and cement.
ii. Generous salary and wages.
iii. Very good standard of living.
iv. Continuous diversification of the economy.
v. Accommodates over 200 cultures and various religions.
vi. Created a city often confused as a state or country called Dubai.
Dubai’s standards
a. Free delivery
b. Free education
c. Interest-free loan for personal buildings of citizens
d. Sponsors weddings of citizens
e. Heavy infrastructural development
f. Developed and diversified economy
g. One of the highest living standards in the world
Triggers for Dubai’s success
a. Invested oil revenues in building cities’ infrastructure, which contributed to economic boom
b. Protects and advances biodiversity
c. Turned oil dividends into capital for other sectors
d. Turned oil dividends into capital for industrialization
In the confines of irony, I will like to show us some triggers of these curses. Before I do that, I will like to examine one country that has been declared to be in a falling state and its attributes
Venezuela
i. Decades of poor governance
ii. Political corruption
iii. Chronic shortage of food
iv. Inadequate living standards
v. Lockdown of immigration due to crisis
vi. Currency still higher than Nigeria’s
Triggers
i. Corrupt government practices
ii. Power tussle
iii. Lack of diversification
iv. Poor policies and regulations
In itemizing these we can clearly see the curse is the trigger and the trigger is the curse. The Guardian newspaper in 2021 also referred to this sector as the wealth of sorrow and I quote, “The rich natural resources bring corruption and poverty to a nation rather than positive economic development and counterintuitively, these nations end up with lower growth and development than those without natural resources”.
In my many years on this planet, I have found one thing to be true that, by all means, we ought to live in harmony and peace. So, today, I come up with some solutions for us to weed out the evil past and this curse called crude oil. We must abandon it. We must abandon it all and put it on lockdown. How can we allow an inanimate to decide the present and future? The government should declare this substance a narcotic and further ban all its use to give our nation a break say for two years, the time needed to recover. I believe the Nigerian crude is quite different from that of the UK, USA, Norway and Dubai. I strongly believe that the fact that the word Nigerian was attached to it is what has served us this far.
I would have to apologize to say it is infelicitous that Nigeria was ready for freedom in 1960 but not for wealth. We should have stayed building ideals and not intertwined with tangibles.
The government talks about it very infrequently like it wasn’t there yet there are still employees at different strata attached with bodies and privateers willing to take up the responsibility of managing the oil industry. There are no plans to use this section to diversify our economy or any leader that simply says that, as President, I am going to make our refineries workable and stop bunkering. Our debts are boldly declared but not our revenues from oil and royalties. Our islands do not and riverine areas of exploitation do not exist on the government’s agenda. Plans to buy into exploration sites outside the country also do not exist.
In my column some years ago, titled “Nigeria a nation with no friends,” I made it expedient that no country of the world can do it alone without good and competitive friendship. There are no obviously advantageous interactions with the OPEC countries on how best the future of the sector and how to improve the exploitation that faces challenges in some OPEC countries. A question was asked, are the refineries truly dead or are the members of OPEC turned blind, for reasons? What happens to the proceeds of 1,333 million barrels of oil per day as at February 2023?
Why is Nigeria’s oil sector sitting? Why are the companies not mandated to help? There might be little difference between now and the dark ages, as it were, we are still being robbed by trade. Natural and human resources continue to be merchandise for the world to buy. We are like the confused farmer that sells all his crops at a price and goes to the market to buy his own crops at inflated prices. This is evident with the cries of offshore workers of them having to pay unique authorities and having to pay 20 per cent of their actual salaries as a deal to be employed.
In the South-South, a certain company came into a close-knit community and representatives accepted a one-time wage instead of free electricity for the siting of that company within the community. This is the full-length decisiveness of leadership in Nigeria. A fraction of that community refused the deal. The few lot became the only ones entitled to electricity from the Shell grid from 1994 till date. A fewer lot became entitled to scholarships, while across the country this company issued scholarship programmes from that office. Today the children of that land are cleaners in that establishment and casual workers. What a beauty, I emphasize, this can only be a curse. This is, however, not saying that Nigeria is not being manipulated by the global market; after all, deals like those in this story could be better brokered. The business sense of any transaction, however, constricts.
Also, Africa Has No United Front
There is no united front, which is why the United Kingdom is tearing Africa apart. We should be willing to get independency and hold the assets in the power of strategic unity. Africa cannot attain the unity you have in USA or UK without taking into consideration that we were formally under the colonial system. All those who have initiated such unity in the past such as Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sekou Toure of Guinea were gotten rid of. Nigeria was going to revive this unified front but got caught up in her own problems.
Finally, I very much disagree with the fact that the oil or crude sector is a curse. I believe it is time to call ourselves to order.
