Tuesday, December 30, 2014
The hope of restoring normalcy to a morally bankrupt nation to a place in the sun greater than it had ever been is ebbing gradually. Nigeria is in economic straits, maimed by official corruption, which slices off more than 50 % of her GDP in revenue. The nation's oil deals which has been shrouded in the caucuses of bargaining and appalling crudity has left the people in abject poverty.
But President Goodluck Jonathan's sidekick wouldn't have any of such. They are used to thinking that the ugly picture is a mere grotesque hodgepodge concocted by half-baked, uneducated neurotics who are bent on sabotaging the humane president. It's time Mr President summon the moral courage and pledge the reversal of the nation's menacing presence and the future.
Regrettably, the argument of Jonathanians is not supported by Mr president's broken promises, overt corruption, oil theft and pipeline vandalism. The gruelling grind of irony in a land flowing with energy under its belly vanquished presidential hollowness for its failure to make the economy boom.
In 2011 NNPC signed a USD28.5 billion Memorandum of Understanding, MOU with the Chinese to build the NNPC Greenfield Refineries in Bayelsa, Kogi, and Lagos States'. So far, none has been built, four years down the line. In 2012 at the Nigerian Oil and Gas Conference, the bogey minister promised that Turn Around Maintenance', TAM, will gulf USD700 million for the four refineries within 12 months.
As we speak, none of the four Nigerian Refineries operates with more than 60% capacities. Kaduna refinery operates below 30% of her installed capacity. That is after billions of dollars was expended. How else can we explain that TAM was a waste of our common patrimony and the crudest form of corruption? The four refineries can produce 445,000 barrel of oil per day, if they are functioning at 100% capabilities; which is still below Nigeria's current need of about 39 million litres according to the PPPRA per day!
President Jonathan's government expended trillions of dollars on the so-called Fuel Subsidy that was reeked with hyper-corruption. When Nigerians protested the enrichment of the president's cronies with the oil scam, Mrs Diezani Allison-madueke deadened her concerns scornfully and bluntly told the nation to go to hell or that the Fuel Subsidy would be reduced by half any time she choses.
It was a show of sheer unconcealed disdain for the Nigeria masses. The protest against Fuel Subsidy was partly against her career of gross abuse of office and blatant assault on the volition of the people to benefit from the resources of their nation. While the people haggled and groaned under the excruciating hike in the price of fuel, the federal government remained blunted in her responsibilities to the electorate as stipulated by the constitution.
That profound deadening of consciousness is the sheerest negation of nation-building, where the peoples' demand for access to common till is viewed as doing them favour. Any surprise that President Jonathan gloated and gloried suppressing protesters who seek the reversal of fuel increments in the past? Even after many people have lost their lives, all the promises of palliatives never came.
Till now, the consistent figure of about N200 billion the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency, PPPRA, pays to petroleum marketeers quarterly for subsidy hasn't changed. Yet, Nigeria remains one of the few OPEC members still importing majority of Refined Petroleum products to the tune of over USD15 billion yearly.
There is no doubts that the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, has accumulated dust wherever is it kept. This is due largely to the frosty relationship between the Hon. Minister and the National Assembly members. This has resulted into her getting Court Injunction stopping them from investigating the alleged N10 billion allegedly expended on private jets. This is away from the USD20 billion missing in the NNPC accounts as alleged by the former CBN Governor, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, now the Emir of Kano.
The Presidency is aware that the non-passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill, PIB, is gravely affecting investment in the oil and gas industry and that continued delay is inimical to the nation's economy. The passage of the PIB would have fast-tracked the exploration of oil in many part of the country where oil has recently been discovered. The President is also aware that the passage of PIB will steam the tide of mega-corruption and the suitcase oil portfolios will come to an abrupt end.
We are back to the same position. My former union, Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers, NUPENG, in alliance with the Petroleum and National Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, PENGASSAN, has embarked on industrial action, grounding the already traumatised economy for lack of faith in the government of the day. The oil unions are accusing the president of inability to fix existing and build new refineries, bad roads, arbitrary sacking of union members by oil companies. The Trade Union Congress even took it further.
Arising from its National Executive Council, NEC, the central labour union enthuse: "The congress expresses dismay that the prices of refined petroleum products have remained unchanged despite the significant fall of crude oil prices which the CBN acknowledged as a steady one. "We therefore called on the government to direct the appropriate agency to respond by adjusting the pump price of petroleum products, which will ameliorate the impact on the purchasing power by the devaluation of the Naira.
Now, Nigerians are reminded to be contented with the oil goddess with the burning beauty who the alternate lot falls upon as the OPEC's Chairman that becomes a shinning jewel on her scrap-iron crown! A fourth-grade schoolmarm could have thought that the minister even the hewers of wood and the drawers of water knew when to demand for wage increase to cushion their labour. She was the least possessed of that burning sense of mission to end the ogre of corruption the perennial crisis of fuel scarcity.
Over the weekend, the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, Mr Godwin Emefiele disclosed that Nigeria loses N24 billion yearly on waivers granted to importers of crude oil. This is in spite the fact that those enjoying the waiver are the same people as those criminally benefiting from Fuel Subsidy graft.
Both the International Energy Agency and former U.S. Energy Information chief Guy Caruso predict oil prices are likely to remain lower for a while, barring a major disruption in supply. "It's highly unlikely OPEC gets their act together, so I see prices being weak for the next six months or so," Mr Caruso said.
It's obvious that Nigeria will remain politically stunted, economically traumatised, developmentally backward for many years to come for refusing to diversify. It's a stark choice we have to make. Either we diversify or we start drinking our oil! An anti-State agent? A megalomania? A sadistic fancy? All of them in part. It's because the State itself has become the biggest swindler and crook. A robbers' state! The hope of nation-becoming, which early in 2011 vividly accomplished President Jonathan's restoration's campaigns has faded in the twilight of 2014.
There is no retelling that Mr Jonathan's moribund regime represents the most harrowing of the nation's nightmares over and beyond even the horror visited on the nation by military juntas. I am certain Nigerians will be approaching the polling booths across the country on February 14, 2015 with one thing in mind: Nations collapse or perish for whom it exists when the loss of force of resistance by the people give way to oppressive despots to triumph in their oppression.
ite House Director of the US National Economic Council, Mr. Jeff Zients, highlighted Nigeria’s economic woes when he said a few days ago that the cessation of oil imports from Nigeria had to do with the significant rise in domestic US oil production.
Zients, US Labor Secretary, Thomas Perez, and White House Policy Council Director, Cecelia Munoz, told a few US journalists thus: “across the last several years, US oil production has ramped up significantly by more than 50 percent to now over eight and a half million barrels per day.” He explained that such a high turn up in local US oil production “has now dramatically reduced our dependency on imports,” Zients noted, adding that “in fact, we now produce more here than we import.”
The Guardian Newspaper reported that the White House official stated that the development is consistent with President Barack Obama’s energy strategy, which has changed “quite a bit over the last few years as we are much less dependent on oil imports.” That strategy has not only left Nigeria in the lurch, but has generally also driven down the international market price of oil to a ridiculous $60 range over the last few weeks. Oil prices, which soared around $100 in September, is now $56.52 for the WTI Crude and $61.38 for the Brent Crude oil.
But Zients and other US officials at the press briefing did not address the issue of the ongoing importation from other oil producing nations, including OPEC members like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and non-OPEC suppliers like Canada. In fact, as at last month, it was reported that, while US completely halted oil imports from Nigeria, it increased its importation from those three countries. Now, Saudi Arabia foreign reserve has hits $1.5 trillion dollars while Nigeria’s meagrely hovers around $39.5 billion dollars!
The reduction of US oil importation from Nigeria to zero is the very first time since 1973 that the US did not import oil from Nigeria. US Shale oil production is responsible for the infusion of “light, sweet crude,” said to be similar to Nigeria’s Bonny Light oil, and US refineries are said to prefer buying the locally produced oil, which is cheaper than Nigeria’s light crude.
Comrade Adams Oshiomhole aptly provided an answer to the question I put before Mr President a few days ago. Here is the question for emphasis: "Is it that Mr Jonathan knows a thing or two about the oil bunkering at the backwaters of the degraded Niger Delta region"?
Those involved in oil bunkering do not fetch crude oil with bowls or buckets. They do so with cargo ships, Marine tankers and ocean liners and, they are known. It's alleged that the wife of Mr President, Mrs Patience Jonathan owns MT Patience cargo ships 1-10 that are involved in oil bunkering at the Forcados Terminal, Brass in Port Harcourt and other oil producing States in the Niger Delta. These gigantic marine tankers don't have wings with which they fly. They are regularly being escorted by the Nigerian navy and other security apparatus across the coastal lines. Nigeria is Africa’s largest oil producer, accounting for more than two million barrels per day. But from investigation, more than 4 million barrel per day is produced, but only two million is accounted for. Even the Nigeria Liquified Gas, NLG is not left out of this bizarre business.
Speaking during a visit of the Association of Enigies from Edo South to him yesterday, Oshiomhole said, “Over the past 18 months, we have not shared the excess crude account and yet, the account is empty. Sometimes we are told they have taken money from it to fund subsidies including subsidy on kerosene but your royal highnesses, there is nowhere in your various domains where kerosene is sold for N50. So in the name of subsidy, large sums of money are being stolen.
“Things are tough now around the country because the Federal Government mismanaged our national resources and what is being stolen, nobody agrees it is being stolen. What is arguable is who is responsible for this stealing. When the Federal Government and the President talk about oil theft and the amount that is allegedly stolen is huge such that whereas we have the capacity to produce about 2.4 million barrels a day, what accrues into the federal government account is less than 1.8 million barrel a day.
“From the last time we had a meeting, the handouts they distributed shows that sometime for a period of two weeks, we were losing as much as 700,000 barrels a day and that has been on for the past twelve years. I am not able to understand why, suddenly, Nigeria cannot protect its territorial waters because the boundaries have not changed and the people are still the same and at the peak of the so-called militancy, we were still exporting about 2 million barrels a day.
“Then how can we explain that after we have resolved the issue of militancy in the Niger Delta, we have rehabilitated the ex-militants and even awarded contracts to them, that we are losing as much crude oil as that to oil thieves and to the best of my knowledge, there is no major known person who has been prosecuted and convicted for oil theft in a way that reflects the magnitude of what is being allegedly stolen.
“What this means is that our budgets have not performed over the past 3 years whereas the budgets have been based on an average of between $77 to $78 and $79 a barrel. The average price of Nigeria’s sweet crude has been around $108 per barrel. That gives a surplus of over $30. Ideally, we ought to be saving $36 per barrel and 2.3 million barrel a day over the past three years and if you look at these numbers you will find that what we have in our excess crude oil account should be over $30billion but as we speak, we have barely $3 billon in our excess crude account.
“Now oil price has dropped to $60 and because we have not saved, the naira is undergoing devaluation. Already as low as N180 per dollar and I believe by February when the elections are over, nobody is going to want to hold the naira. Wherever the election goes, I expect that the naira will hit over N200 per dollar. The inflationary consequence of it is that prices of goods and services will go up and part of the vicious cycle of the devalued naira in the manner that is being done is that the price of petroleum products imported in dollars will go up in naira and government will be asking people who are already poor to pay more money for petroleum products", Oshiomhole said.
For years to come, Nigeria will lie outside the main stream of countries whose economy recharged itself by their Leaders' commitment to development. The oil price fall is so devastating that it will take Nigeria several years of redirection and diversification to recover from it. Unfortunately, President Jonathan's cringers and lickspittles belief nations grows naturally. There are no naturally grown nations; they stemmed or are forged from leaders with the intellectual capabilities to think through policy frame work. Savage corruption gives birth to political backwardness, economic stagnation and decimates its currencies.
The singular act of surging corruption will set Nigeria apart from and behind the other aspiring developing countries. Nigeria which has become a problem child of the globe, a nation of gifted, vigorous people aided in the past by military caste and by great intellectuals suddenly embraces an uncanny passion for unbridled corruption. The President couldn't bring his earlier taunted virtues - modesty, toughness, forbearance and a blunt brute into collision with the treasury looters in his government and crush them into pieces.
President Jonathan has brought Nigeria into an artificially stabilised state at a medieval level of confusion and weakness. He could not fight Boko Haram insurgents, nor stop finical haemorrhage, or crude oil theft. His government depicts a logical failure of all that had gone before - or at least of all that had been glorious! The President has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps.
The Otuoke man rarely litters his mind on the crazy patchwork nation whose intermittent socio-economic status broadly reduces her stance in the comity of nations aspiring to become one of the largest economies in the world by 2020. Perhaps, our President needs to read Nietzsche in which Thus Spake Zarathustra was written: "I say unto you: it is the good war which halloweth every cause. War and courage have done more great things than charity". Nigerians must make the right choice and resolve the nation's leadership question in next year's February election before insanity closes down our minds.
