Much ado about poisoned fuel

It’s annoying when NGOs just won’t respect the liberty of their own companies to make easy money. Everywhere you go (apologies to MTN in this era of plagiarism); people are making money at the expense of others. Check the pyramid companies rejected in Europe and America but making billions in Africa on unverified products. All […]

It’s annoying when NGOs just won’t respect the liberty of their own companies to make easy money. Everywhere you go (apologies to MTN in this era of plagiarism); people are making money at the expense of others.
Check the pyramid companies rejected in Europe and America but making billions in Africa on unverified products. All over the world businesses thrive by taking advantage of situations. For businesses to thrive there must be a commodity, then a willing buyer and a willing seller.  Africa has a huge chunk of global hydrocarbons deposited where life is said to have begun. Under the earth, crude is just a raw mineral. It only becomes an asset when processed and traded on the usually unjust scales of the global exchange system.
Refined crude powers our cars and generating sets, thanks to China. Fifty-something years after flag independence, not many of the African nations blessed with the crude have the capacity to refine its own crude. Thirty years ago, Naija used to be an exception; today it is the highest net importer of refined fuel. Behind every indolent Naija billionaire on the Forbes list is the stench of crude sleaze. With their ill-gotten wealth, they bankroll political campaigns that cancel campaign promises after elections.
Last week, a European NGO established beyond doubt that Europeans export the worst quality of fuel to Africa. It is on African lungs that the poisonous product tests the resilience of the ‘human’ lung to poisoned lead. The result is that a few thousands go down with cancer and the rest battle with breathing diseases. Of course in Africa, if people start attributing lung-related ailments and deaths to poisonous fuel, where would God be with his benign will to ‘give and take’ without questioning?
When kids succumb to asthma, COPD, emphysema in a continent where only the rulers and their lackeys have access to treat earaches in London, the parents remember the concept of abiku or ogbanje and send them to ordained lunatics to be ‘delivered’. It is reassuring that Ghana which gets these toxic fuel categorically explained that they meet ‘local standards’.
European merchants have been helping Africa for a long time. They did not start the slave trade, they swore by their ancestors that our forefathers enslave rival tribes before they came; they only cashed in on an existing trade and internationalized it. Today, the offspring of slave traders enjoying the rewards of their forefathers’ illicit commerce deny vicarious liability for the sins of their fathers and block reparation.
If you ask most African men, fair is fair because we all catch what Spike Lee describes as Jungle Fever. When Europeans realised that men love ‘tomatoes’, they invented toning chemicals with minimum 5% mercury. Our deracinated women went for it. Today African mothers have various forms of cancer that the glorified clinics in their locality are not equipped to treat. Unfortunately, not all ‘housewives’ who have money to buy poison have saved $15 million dollars to pay for their hospital bills, like Mrs Jones. In Naija, health tourism is banned for non-residents of Camp Buhari.
The best poster boy for the bleaching business is a Ghanaian boxer named Bukom Boaku but toning creams are a million-dollar business everywhere from Cape Town to Kingston. In a 2012 article, the Times of India quoted the WHO as warning that skin lightening products are at the base of endemic kidney disease, resistant bacterial infections, anxiety, depression, psychosis and peripheral neuropathy. Sorry Dr WHO, in Africa, only witches and wizards cause health problems.
Aluminium is an known silent killer. It has been on the priority list of America-classified toxins since 2007. It is known to be lethal for patients with renal or kidney diseases. It is clearly identified as venom for the human nervous, immune and genetic system. But aluminium companies and their products thrive in Africa obviously because they ‘meet local standards’.
Asbestos made its entrance to Naija in the early 70s when the nouveau riche abandoned zinc roofing. It is still the ceiling and roofing material of choice in most homes today. It is the main known trigger of mesothelioma and asbestosis. The trouble is not with the rich but the poor who drink water drained from the roofs because ‘government has no business providing pipe borne water’ when digging boreholes is a political achievement. In normal climes where the health and safety of citizens are the priority of government, asbestos remains banned and homes built with that stuff are taken down. Heavy penalties are levied against companies that damage human lives trading in asbestos. But in Africa asbestos trading is still ‘within legal limits’. For those looking for the dictionary meaning of ‘legal limits’, it is those limits, which traditionally rate European dogs on a higher plane than African children.
The cosmetic business is a multi-million dollar moneymaker. It transforms hags into queens without Modupe Ozolua’s scalpel. Established doctors know they contain more than normal dose of chemicals that Europeans would never apply on their pets. Bottom line; pray what is this Swiss brouhaha about poisoned refined fuel? It must be a headline-grabbing thing, and there let it end! Give us fuel, coated in death.