LIVE UPDATES
Dangote's asseveration that the oil mafia don't want his $19bn refinery to succeed should not be swept under the rug
Late Indian sage Mahatma Gandhi, a prominent figure in India's struggle for freedom and independence, once said, "There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience --- it supersedes all other courts."
Drawing a lesson from this evergreen irrefutable saying, Nigeria, a country blessed with both human and natural resources, indeed, has a lot to learn from the assertion in terms of its denotative and connotative meanings.
Nigeria is a funny and peculiar country. Over the years, it sure appears that the anguish, miseries and inexplicable sufferings faced by fellow compatriots stifled and subjugated by the actions and wicked policies of our leaders have not been able to prick their consciences.
Therefore, Nigeria is peculiar in every sense of the word. If not, how else can one describe a country which is richly blessed by the benevolent Creator, yet the citizens live in trepidation, squalor, poverty, uncertain future and ravaging hunger.
In the reckoning of a great number of citizens, Nigeria has no reason to be poor and the poverty narrative is only a story to be told to the marines as many believe that Nigeria is akin to the biblical land of Canaan that "flows with milk and honey."
But how Nigerians find themselves in the precariously messy situations is like the case of the insects that eat the leaves that live inside the leaves --- our problems are not farfetched. We are under the iron grips of brutal, nepotistic, greedy and wicked leaders who take delight in seeing the masses suffering.
Many Nigerians believe that if corruption, maladministration, favouritism, religious bigotry, cronyism and other socio-economic and political malaise plaguing the country were dismantled, the citizens can breathe, no thanks to the sarcastic, sardonic and contemptuous expression being bandied about by the political elite to mock the masses.
But are the leaders ready and willing to ameliorate those vices that have held the country down for so long? Nigerians can only conjecture; but going by their body languages, actions and inactions, they want the people to remain perpetually impoverished and downtrodden.
When Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the President of the Dangote Group, mooted the idea of establishing a refinery, the majority of Nigerians heaved a sigh of relief that the perennial scarcity of petrol amid the humongous price of the product would lessen.
But when the refinery eventually took off, Nigerians' expectations that fuel supply situation in the country would improve has yet to offer any modicum of hope for the already battered, poverty-stricken, starving and the suffocated masses of Nigeria.
In the face of the forlorn hope for succour from the Dangote Refinery, news of the oil mafia's conspiracy plotting to make the $19bn Dangote Refinery fail, suffused the atmosphere.
Dangote, a quintessential business mogul and the richest man in Africa did not fail to let the cat out of the bag.
In his characteristic manner, Dangote spilled the beans when he spoke recently at the Afreximbank annual meetings (AAN) and AfriCaribbean Trade and Investment Forum in Nassau, The Bahamas.
He had said the group he labelled as stronger than the mafia in drug tried several times to stop the project from becoming a reality.
“Well, I knew that there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, are stronger than the mafia in drugs,” he asserted, saying that the group was both local and foreign conspirators.
Dangote asserted: “There is a local one and a global one. It is all mixed up. They tried all sorts but you know, I’m a person that has been fighting all my life. So, I think it is part of my life to fight. But despite the battles, our victory is assured.
“I think we will end up winning because the masses and the government will be on our side because what we are doing is right.”
He reiterated that the 650,000 barrel-per-day Dangote refinery, sitting on 2,635 hectares (6,500 acres) of land at the Lekki Free Zone on the edge of Lagos and costs an estimated $19bn, is expected to be a game changer when fully operational by helping to end Nigeria’s reliance on fuel imports.
However, Dangote and his company are not alone in the lamentations about the powerful cabal that has held the company by the jugular and by extension the country. Former Governor of Edo State, now in the Senate, Senator Adams Oshiomhole, alluded to the existence of the oil mafia in the country.
Comrade Oshiomhole, the famous foremost labour activist-turned-politician, did not hide his feelings while blasting the IOCs for allegedly denying Dangote crude oil for his refinery but rather chose to sell to Europeans because of their greed, sabotage, lack of patriotism and of conscience.
He had lamented that with all the funfare in celebrating Dangote Refinery that for once we now have a Nigerian who has initiated one of the world's biggest refineries, Nigerian crude oil is being exported and they denied Dangote of crude allocation.
Instead, he said, the mafia chose to export it to Europe while Dangote, out of frustration, was importing crude from America to Nigeria.
"Those guys deserve to be hanged. If we don't hang them, they will hang all of us. And what it takes to hang them requires a president with extraordinary courage. They are importing diesel even at a time the CBN is saying that there is too much pressure on imports," he indicated.
The intrepid Senator did not stop there. He expressed the desire for the relevant authorities to look at the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
His words: "We have to revisit it (PIA). You can't have a sovereign company under a sovereign nation. They are importing all these things so that Dangote Refinery will not prosper. If you look at the number, if you know what the NNPC has spent between when ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo sold the refinery, Nigerians will marvel. NNPC persuaded Umaru Yar'Adua, who took over from Obasanjo that they could run the refinery and that they needed $800m.
"But between that time and now, they spent over $10bn, yet the Port Harcourt Refinery is not working. Can you believe that Nigeria produces oil yet the multinationals refuse to sell to Dangote?
"We have a lot to do. We will need a balance of some madness and some ruthlessness to get Nigeria back on track. Otherwise, lamentations will not stop."
To many discerning Nigerians, the complaints are worrisome. Nigeria is the largest crude oil producer in Africa and the world’s sixth largest exporter as OPEC member.
Long ago, when our government-owned refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna were producing at full capacity, we were self-sufficient in refined products.
However, due to incompetence, corruption and the activities of the so-called oil mafia, Nigeria became a net importer of these products.
As the price of crude oil soared and government sought to stop oil subsidies, Organised Labour gave the restoration of our refineries and building of new ones as one of their conditions to accept subsidy removal.
The completion of Dangote Refinery and the coming on stream of several modular refineries were warmly welcomed by Nigerians who are still dealing with extreme costs of petroleum products.
Coming at a time subsidy removal has almost destroyed industrial productivity, Nigerians looked forward to a return to better times when the country would no longer need to import petroleum products.
These complaints of oil mafia sabotages become even more bewildering with President Bola Tinubu, also doubling as the Minister of Petroleum Resources.
The job of ridding the country of oil theft and crushing the oil mafia to enable Nigerians to once again breathe and enjoy affordable refined products in-country falls squarely on the shoulders of the President because as it is said, "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown."
It is still unfathomable the possible reasons responsible for the lack of response that the refinery owners have always complained about. The question now begs the answer: what is the sense in licensing investors to build modular refineries yet they are not allowed to do their business?
Dangote and other local refiners have pomised Nigerians that petroleum product prices will drastically reduce when they are fully operational.
Now that the dust surrounding the mafia conspiracy has yet to settle, Nigerians are appealing to the President to act fast and direct the relevant authorities to guarantee adequate supply of crude oil and protection of the country's refiners from the activities of the oil mafia. Our economic recovery prospect anchors strongly on local oil refining, nothing more, nothing less.
Just as Oshiomhole rightly said, if the saboteurs are not crushed, they might end up crushing the entire country and her citizenry. It is hightime the oil mafia were crushed to allow the masses and local oil refiners including the Dangote Refinery to breathe.
