BABA, GIVE US PETROL. BIKO.

Dear Mr President,

I write to you in your capacity as the President of Nigeria, as well as in your capacity as the Nigerian oil minister. In case you missed it, we have no petrol. We nor geh fuel.

I am hoping that you know - perhaps, that you remember - that petrol is our life in Nigeria. Petrol is how we move our cars, just like many others around the world. Petrol is also how we light our homes, unlike many others around the world. Petrol is how we get our haircuts and hairdos; how we heat our bathwater and chill our drinking water; how we recharge the batteries of our phones so we can get on Facebook and chant Sai Buhari; how we power our computers so that we can do this BVN thing and that TSA thang...

Petrol and diesel are how we get things done. Probably the only thing we don't do with petrol ...yet... is move cattle from the plains of Kebbi to the forests of Delta, with all the farmfights between and betwixt. But even the fish we get from Argungu need petrol - and diesel - to stay preserved; they require kerosene - or diesel - to become the protein-rich meals that we cherish.  

Granted that these days, we need less petrol to do some of the things I have just mentioned because PHCN somehow decided that holding power in trust for us is not the same thing as holding power from us, and so, perhaps reading your famed body language, they have elected to give power to the people (pun intended o, very, very much intended). Yea, granted that that may be the case, we still do need petrol - and diesel....and kerosene - to get by. We need it so that when the Oga-at-the-phcn-top decides to remind us who is in charge, we can still watch our Chelsea match as they continue their one-win-per-month promo.

So please sir, give us petrol. Do whatever you need to do to give us petrol. 

Even if you are Baba Go Slow, you may agree with me that there can be no going - slow or fast - if there is no petrol, if there is no fuel. There can be no going - fast or slow - if the petrol stations are empty of petrol and the streets are replete with NGN5,000-eligible young men brandishing plastic tubes with which they advertise their own mobile petrol stations to anyone who cares.

We nor geh fuel Baba. Give us fuel. Not excuses.

Daalu.

Yours sincerely, (yesso, because this was very sincerely written, from me to you)

Hugo Naijaman