Desperate deregulators

This position and information I am pretty sure did not come to most Nigerians as a surprise, especially those who know the antecedence of the oil minister as a non-repentant oil oligarch who has derived so much inspiration from the tradition of militocracy, an era that in the first place brought him to prominence both […]

This position and information I am pretty sure did not come to most Nigerians as a surprise, especially those who know the antecedence of the oil minister as a non-repentant oil oligarch who has derived so much inspiration from the tradition of militocracy, an era that in the first place brought him to prominence both as the General Manager of the Mining Corporation in Jos and later Minister of Mines & Power when the Buhari government held forte from January 1984 to sometime in the late 1980s when he was redeployed under the government of General Babangida and substituted, Tamuno David West as minister in charge of the oil ministry.

To say the least, a good number of us cried foul when President Yar’adua thought there was no more any Nigerian that is young and vibrant that is worth the oil minister portfolio. Our apprehension was not because we doubt the fact that in Rilwanu Lukman lie an oil technocrat, but of the old school who given the nature of his appointment was likely to go ahead in advising the president with anti people policies such as the one under discourse today.

To add salt to injury, the moment he settled down in the ministry, he brought his side kicks to prominence against more experienced and tested personalities that would have not only moved the oil industry forward, but above all ill-advise against any such economics called deregulation  which obviously has no place in any progressive lexicon of modern day economic theory where even the umbilical cord of capital have since seen the fallacy of free market thesis and are getting more involved in the running of their national economies.

Oh yes! Even here at home, the meaning of what Sanusi Lamido and the Central Bank are doing is simply reintroducing government’s involvement in the running of the finance sector when a sum of over N400 billion was injected into the five ailing banks. Sanusi and others may wish to say that government is not interested in acquiring shares in these banks but the mere fact that public funds have been injected as a bailout measures suggest that it is reckless for any government to just sit by and see an undisciplined wing of the bourgeoisie take charge of the commanding heights of the national economy.

This exactly is what the oil cartel under the supervision of Dr Lukman is doing at such a critical moment in history when such a wrong doing is seen to have caused tremendous shock in the economies of the superpowers and the world as a whole. To me, our leaders do not seem to be learning any lesson from what we see happening to other people and climes. This therefore suggests what Hillary Clinton said of Nigerian leadership a few weeks ago when tripping in Africa.

Mrs. Clinton argued that a clear sign of poor governance in Nigeria is captured in the inability of the nation to provide petroleum products for the teaming population even despite the fact that the nation is the world’s seventh largest producer of oil. Does anybody have superior facts to punctuate this simple and painful truth?

We are at it again; the federal government out of its sheer failures has yet erred in understanding what really is the problem with the oil sector. Leakages, mismanagement and inability to take control of production, distribution and marketing of oil and related products is wrongly understood by those in government and instead, they are thinking that the best way to address the endemic problems in the oil sector is deregulating the downstream sector so that we the people may have to pay much more for what we consume while they continue to import refined products and making so much profits from our poverty.

I am not sure if Nigeria is not the only country among the major producers of oil that operate without state refineries. All those built have been deliberately killed and since those in authority understood and tasted how sweet the importation of refined products is, they appear to have vowed not to allow any of the nation’s refineries work or even contemplate building modern ones to contend with the internal pressures as well as export some to Nigeria’s neighbors as a means of boosting international trade.

Instead, they won’t do that. They have to allow those from among them that smuggle refined products, despite its shortage, out of the country or even bid for contracts to supply same to these countries that otherwise depend on Nigeria for the products that they consume.

All these problems abound and yet the only redemption that the masses of our people will get from a government that claims to derive its legitimacy from their votes is deregulation, which literarily means allowing market forces to determine the prices of petroleum products that they consume. This is most unfair.