Nigeria @64: Reflecting on the past and a viable future

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

The day is here again: October 1st. It brings so much memory of our shared political past and puts us in a stranded position of mixed feelings. How are we faring as a nation and as a people? Are we going forward or are we retrogressing? Are we making the right decisions to steer the affairs of our nation as envisioned by our founding fathers or conceiving and charting better pathways? Is the hope brighter now than when we started? These and many other questions roam freely in our minds as we celebrate another independence day anniversary of our dear nation. Nigeria is now 64 years old as a free nation. How free we are as a people and how well we have managed freedom, if we are truly free, are pertinent issues that bother many well-meaning and patriotic citizens who are worried about national issues over the last 64 years.
In the last 64 years, we grew from the attempts to build systems to watching the same systems crumbling to our faces, bringing down along with them all prospects of a flourishing nation. We saw a very strong agricultural sector at the outset of the nation’s political independence; however, over time, it became little to nothing to write home about as the nation goes on its knees under the present food insecurity which is even unprecedented in the nation’s entire existence. Quite unbelievable! We lost the prospects of a very strong cocoa industry in the West, of a global standing palm oil industry from the South, of a strong groundnut industry in the North, and so many others lost opportunities across the country and its geopolitical zones, all in the last 64 years.
We are a nation blessed with innumerable numbers and commercial quantities of solid minerals, all there before and into independence; yet, we have not really and directly benefited from them as a nation and as a people. All that is being told publicly, again and again of the sector, are people, we know, but cannot name, and apprehended, who are usurping the nation’s right to its solid minerals. But the reality is that powerful Nigerians, who have risen beyond the law, have taken it upon themselves, without consequences, to take ownership of some of the nation’s critical resources and common properties. Our gold and others are mined daily by individuals without legal implications. And this continues, even after 64 years, keeping the ordinary citizens in the loop of penury, inviting insecurity across the North Central and closer regions where these illegal activities are predominant.
It is the same story with our oil and gas industry; since we spud the first of our oil wells at Oloibiri in the present day Bayelsa state in 1965, the story has been typical of the normal – actually tragic – Nigerian developmental story. Like many say of the natural blessing: it has become a curse to our system. And indeed, the only reasonable thing we can comfortably say of the blessings of the national oil and gas industry is that it is a curse to our national systems. We lost all investment in agriculture because of the fast and huge money we started getting from crude oil. Today, it is the same story; we produce crude oil and hold the 8th largest deposit of gas globally, yet, till date, we could not find a way to make Nigerians substantially benefit from the ownership of the resource – after 64 years! It is always from one story of some cabals to another. It is always the story of vandalidation of national infrastructure in the sector to the well-known oil subsidy corruption that robs the citizens of their right to enjoy the resource. Unexplainably, we built four refineries and saw all of them become moribund. As a result, a predictable reality is that we have to become a net importer of refined petroleum products; the only nation globally that does that on the back of ownership of crude oil and with several built refineries. Right under our noses, a private refinery was started and completed, spending approximately $20 billion, about N24 trillion at a dollar conversion rate of N1,200 which was the highest during the refinery construction period, yet, only between 2002 and 2023, we wasted N17 trillion on turnaround maintenance of our refineries with nothing meaningful to show for it. Taking it back to what happened from 1999, would most definitely reveal that we could have confidently and conveniently built other working refineries, but rather we chose to corruptly turn the sector into a drainage from where we drain the country resources for personal usages.
So, this week, as we roll out the drum, I find it difficult to dance. The reality of the rots we have turned the country into in the last 64 years are too visible to ignore. Even the Renewed Hope Agenda is struggling to grasp the level of monumental damage to the country. Nigerians are hungry and starving. We are hopelessly ravaged all around by insecurity; bandits killing and maiming with impunity, kidnappers are everywhere on the loose, armed robbery becoming the order of the day and ritual killings fast becoming an alternative to success for too many citizens. We lost it a long time ago, and now, it appears almost impossible to right the wrong of the past. The more we attempt to correct the many evils, the more we appear to fall deeper into stronger woes. We ought to be more concerned and probe fervently and ask more serious questions and engage better about Nigeria’s fundamental questions.
What is wrong with the Renewed Hope policies? Absolutely nothing! So why are they not working? The Nigerian system has become too screwed for positive changes to take root. Removing fuel subsidy is the perfect and best way to go; free the industry from governmental control, open the gates for private investors, allow market forces to dictate prices, kill corruption in the industry and hand over a beneficial oil and gas sector to the citizens, where competition would eventually bring down prices. Do we have a semblance of that now? No! We all saw the reported fight between the cabal and Dangote group. If anything, that fight with a new entrant is to protect and maintain the status quo; the fight to maintain their holds on the nation’s oil industry. And apparently they are succeeding. The same Dangote that rolled out AGO (Diesel) and dropped its pump price significantly from N1, 900 to N1, 200, eventually has to sell PMS to the public at almost N900.
If we really want it to work, we would have to stay true to all the pre-agreements with the Dangote Group; supply crude to the refinery locally at naira rate and in naira, and remove all government control over the refinery’s determinations of its costs and prices. As it is currently, it is an absolute impossibility to have the product sold at any price below what is currently stated. With a barrel of crude at approximately $69, cost of refining covering chemical, personnel and energy costs at approximately $9 per barrel and the cost of investments recovery at approximately $9 per barrel, it would amount to about total $97 per barrel of crude. Noting that a barrel of crude oil would produce 170 liters of refined PMS, and at current dollar conversion rate, the most economic probable cost per barrel of the product from Dangote refinery would be N819.00. That is no relief to Nigerians, as much as it is not Dangote’s problem.
Another emerging challenge in the present entanglement in the nation’s oil sector with the soiled hands of the cabal everywhere in the sector including the regulatory kernel is that it would discourage other major entrants from attempting to bring in their resources and know-how to establish big refineries – giving how Messrs Dangote and Dangote Group are being mistreated at this critical formative midwifery of their iconic refinery which deserves all the support they could get to a smooth operation; and that could serve as a global reference – as all eyes are in the Nigerian oil industry – to see how the host nation treats a major modern corporate entity. Couldn’t it be established already of a case aptly captured by a Yoruba proverb and probably in other cultures, that roughly translates as the cane used to wipe the first wife is well kept and reserved for the incoming new wife or wives? This is what the mistreatment of Messrs Dangote are Dangote Group is portraying to other Nigerians with means and the rest of the global investment community. And consequently Nigeria and Nigerians may not benefit optimally in probably a long time because we all know the consequences of a single major seller in an industry. The economic law is clear, whether ceteris paribus or not.
At this juncture, coming into another independence anniversary, we have to earnestly consider consciously changing our strategies to align with what is feasible and capable of simultaneously addressing the challenges of making life easier for Nigerians as well as creating the necessary changes that are needed to rewrite the historical development of the country. To do this, four things must be accorded attention with absolute determination to achieve set objectives. The first is setting out to mass produce food for Nigerians. The second is getting security right nationwide. The third is resolving the issue of local crude oil refining capacity for the country and all attendant issues. The last is to get a solid grounding to end corruption across all spheres of the Nigeria polity, most especially, the governance and political administrations.
For as long as we cannot feed ourselves effectively and Nigerians remain on their knees as a result of food insecurity, we would not be able to get any other thing right. Beyond repetitions of rhetoric that have over the years failed and keeps failing to provide solutions to the much needed food security in the country, we must from now, set in place more effective processes to produce foods to feed Nigerians. Each of the 774 local government administrations in the country should be mandated to farm a determined minimum hectares of land through direct labour, and all the harvest must be sold primarily within the local government areas. This does not however include all household farms and already existing farmers within the local government.
At the Federal government level, aside from graduates of medical sciences that would be sent to hospitals and health infrastructure, all serving corps members must be mandated to work on farms organised by the collaboration between the NYSC, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and the Presidency. All the produce from these farms should go directly to the Federal strategic food reserves and for any other purpose that may be deemed fit with time.
On the issue of security, it has become very clear that the organised national security systems in the Military, Police and others would not be able to effectively stop what is becoming a growing insecurity in the country; which may even escalate further as the future seems uncertain and grimmer. It is time that we organised the traditional systems across the country as a weapon against community insecurity. Working with the organised security outfits, the government must give a marching order to all traditional heads to secure their respective domains or anyone found wanting vacates the position they hold. The traditional rulers are in the best position to organise the grassroots to an offensive against intruders in their domains. Yes, they would always ask for the full support of the security agencies. If these rulers are on the payroll of the government, then let them work to secure their domains and the country at large. That is the most feasible solution to insecurity in Nigeria as it is now.
On the issue of petroleum products to the masses of despair and hapless end users nationwide; speaking of PMS, Diesel, CNG and LPG, we must make a sharp turn with the occasion of this 64th independence anniversary, by providing and presenting to Nigerians a working pathway to restoration. PMS would remain a centerpiece of energy usage in the country; regardless of whatever we do, far more than 75 percent of automobiles in the country would continue to run on PMS, so addressing costs that satisfy both the producers and the citizens would remain a priority concern for the country. And how do we do this? The government must be serious about getting all the local refineries onboard and functioning. We cannot rely on Dangote refinery or any other private refinery that may still come up to alter the price trajectory for the country; the danger of a monopolistic and oligopolistic industry that I mentioned earlier. However, the oil industry is a unique industry and it is global. Prices in the industry are not determined by local variables. The only thing a private refinery in the country would offer us is constant SUPPLY and ACCESS to the products and nothing more.
There is a direction that can change the narrative for the country. Let’s finally get the local refineries operational. Let NNPC, with an arrangement from the Federal government sell crude to these refineries at 60 percent of quoted global price (this is achievable through increasing daily crude production for the country to maintain export quota and create room for local supplies); that would be about N67, 200 per barrel of crude. With refining cost of about $9 (N14, 400) per barrel and not more than $3 (N4,800) per barrel cost recovery cost, we would be looking at a total production cost of N86,400 to process a barrel of crude oil leading to the production of 170 litres of PMS. With this, the refinery would be able to sell out PMS at N508 per litre and it would be expected that the highest the product would be bought at any part of the country would be N570 per liter.
The price mechanism as described above is obtainable only if and when the pre-existing Nigeria corruption element is taken out of the equation. Secondly, it would also appear that there would be a concessionary subsidy from sources that would not directly affect the national income, because we are generating local supply of crude from improved crude oil production that would not affect already existing and projected export mandates. In fact, we can dedicate a couple of new oil fields to feed local refineries.
It is at this point that we must agree that the need to discuss an end to corruption in the country is non-debatable. We can continue to have great projections for the country, but until we get to allow budgeted resources to flow down to the attached line items; and without a lineup of individuals that pilfers it all which gets us to nowhere. Corruption remains a huge calamity holding the country down. 2024 is gradually rounding up; where are the beautifully crafted projects that litter the year’s national budget document? It is an irony of the more you look, the less you see. The year is ending, the budget is gradually nearing a closure, and the monies apparently – and ‘codedly’ in local parlance – are gone into private accounts and purses. This is not the president doing; it is the corruption of all that are involved. We must address corruption or forget about any change we Dream of. Honestly, we must have to convey a national dialogue, where we must decide if we really want to stop corruption in our body polity or continue living with the cankerworms and parasites that keep eating up our commonwealths at the expense of the populace.
These are suggestive pathways to the future. I hope when we mark the next independence anniversary, we will all feel much better as Nigerians and be able to roll out the drums like a people in the mood to celebrate greatness. May God bless and help our Fatherland!

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!