Memories of oil, Nigeria and Tinubu

BY KAYODE SOREMEKEN

As the news unfolded about the Dangote Refinery and the counter-currents, I was stupefied. Specifically, I never knew that Nigeria’s oil policy would ever come to this sorry pass. Mind you, I am not innocent as far as oil and Nigeria are concerned. But I never thought for one moment that my country’s oil would be in a hock to external interests ably egged on by their internal collaborators. As I pondered over this issue, and the other related variable like, massive oil theft, I waited in vain for a rebuttal from official quarters. Thus far, none has come. So what is being bandied about about our oil being used upfront as collateral for our debts by the previous regime may well be true.

As I began to ponder over this and other sad issues, memories came to mind about Nigeria and the black gold.

These memories are mainly owed to a career of over forty years in which I acquired various academic qualifications in the twin areas of oil politics and energy diplomacy.

In the course of this career, the shocks came very early during a field work, which eventually led to the highest academic degree in the area of oil and international relations.

In my attempts to gather first hand-information on oil politics, I had to interview a gentleman, a Nigerian and former secretary General of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). We got talking and in due course, the name of a Canadian scholar, Terisa Turner came up. The gentleman, categorically told me that he knew Terisa Turner. But since he was running late for another appointment, we agreed to meet on the same day, in the same place-his Western House Office on Lagos Island. We duly met as agreed. But when Terisa Turner’s name came up again, the former OPEC scribe told me that he had never met Terisa Turner in his life. I was aghast and I immediately sensed that I was entering an area of study that was populated by invisibles and Invincibles!!

My next port of call, a few days later was on another gentleman. One of those super-perm secs of the Gowon Era. Very suave and self-assured in manners and diction. This is not surprising. Afterall, he had studied the three Greats: Politics, Philosophy and Economics in Oxford with a background in King’s College, Lagos. As an old boy myself, matters moved swiftly between us.

Then the name Terisa Turner came up again. On hearing T.T, this KCOB and Oxford alumnus lost his cool. He proceeded to mouth epithets against the woman, and such are better left out of this piece.

This much was clear however, I had to go back to the Library to search out the works of Terisa Turner.This was when I discovered that the woman wrote her PhD thesis on: The Formulation and Implementation of Nigerian Petrooleum Policy.In the thesis,the thrust of her argument was that Nigeria is mainly an arena where the oil companies act out their various external interests in collusion with various internal interests to the detriment of the Nigerian State

This according to her was a recipe for instability.In this respect she went on to predict long before the 1983 coup that a coup was only a question of time in view of the various forces jousting for influence in the arena of oil policy in Nigeria.

Fast forward to 1985, after finishing the doctoral programme.

I was bristling with enthusiasm and I had to attend a conference in McGill University in Canada, where I presented a Paper on: Oil, Nigeria and Mexico.

After the presentation, one woman came up to me and said that there were gaps in my analysis. That I needed to do more work by way of more familiarity with the literature. I took this suggestion in my stride, after all knowledge by its very nature is infinite. I subsequently asked for the lady’s name and she revealed that she was Terisa Turner. I pressed on by asking her whether she knows the former OPEC scribe, she answered in the affirmative. I duly informed her that the man told me that he does not know her. She simply threw back her head and laughed.

Yet another episode which comes to mind is the LNG Project. Dear reader please note that efforts to harness Nigeria’s gas resources date back to 1964 some sixty years. And as some technocrats are wont tell in fits of escapism, they always contend that Nigeria is not even an oil producing country; that it is in fact a gas producing social formation. My usual response to this is that the power realities which govern oil are also ever present in the gas industry. Long story short, on one fine day, a former oil minister, Tam David-West announced that the money earmarked for the LNG Project, some eight hundred million dollars was missing. The Nigerian media did not pick up the scent. I did and made enquiries from the lawyer in charge of the project under the first administration of Obasanjo. The lawyer was startled because I simply called on him to educate the audience on the issue at an open seminar in Obafemi Awolowo University. He in turn, educated the audience that the then departing regime of Obasanjo handed over the issue to the then incoming government of Shehu Shagari. For four years during the second republic nothing happened. Then the Special Adviser on energy to Shagari died. The 1983 coup came and the whiz kid of the Era bought into a major commercial bank. The new board of directors was made of top and retired personnel of the then NNPC. At this juncture even the non-imaginative reader can fill in the details.

Another episode which comes to mind involves this writer and the late Ken Saro-Wiwa. Largely at my instigation, I caused the defunct African Guardian Magazine to organize a seminar on: Oil Companies and Oil Community Relations. This was way back in 1993.I served as an anchor resource person at this seminar. In this capacity, I had to comment on every paper through analysis and interpretation. I was enjoying myself at this intellectual feast.

The crunch time was when it was Ken Saro-Wiwa’s turn to present a paper. He did all right. But in a different way. He came forth with pictorial footages on the plight of the Ogoni people. The atmosphere changed. Most of the junior workers of the Presidential Hotel poured into the hall. It was no longer a seminar for sedate academics. Heavy advocacy was on courtesy of Ken, the irreverent Ogoni man. But one oil man from Shell would not let him be. He offered counters to Ken’s depositions. It was feisty exchange between the two men. A sort of civil war: for the other man was also from an oil bearing area. As a serious student of oil politics, the implications and irony of this abrasive encounter was not lost on me. For here were two men from the South-South crossing swords with one batting on the side of the oil companies and with Ken on the other side. Evidently it was not a civil exchange and the two men nearly came to blows. For me, the episode brought to my mind the fate of one Italian man, Enrico Mattei who in an earlier era, also took on the oil companies. He died mysteriously in an air crash. And as the records go, it was reported that when Enrico Matteo died in what has been regarded as an arranged air crash, there were no long faces in the corridors of the oil companies. I went on to narrate this story to the audience and proceeded to pointedly warn Ken that if he was not careful, he would go down the Mattei way. This was precisely Ken’s fate two years later. On November 10,1995,he was hanged courtesy of a kangaroo trial, which precluded an appeal. Such indeed are the ways of oil.

As I reflect on this greasy fluid and Nigeria, what vividly comes to mind is that, no Nigerian leader has ever said anything concrete about oil. Rather the focus has always been on oil revenues. But there is an exception. That exception comes in the spirited interventions of Obafemi Awolowo. As the Finance Minister under Gowon, he caused the government to send a delegation to other oil producing countries. He wanted to know why Nigeria was getting low returns from her oil. The delegation produced a comprehensive report as regards the way forward for Nigeria. This was a 1969 document and it should have been used as a Bible for our oil policy. But shortly after, Awolowo left the government and that was the end of the matter. But not quite.

In the run-up to the 1979 and 1983 elections the same Awolowo outlined comprehensive plans as regards how the oil industry would be run. But the man was too far ahead of his time. This was more so when the sage was pitted against the vampires of the then ruling party.

So where are we at the moment. For much too long we have gone to sleep. Such that the abnormal has assumed the profile of the normal. For how can one explain a situation in which an oil producing country cannot refine its product and as such has to depend on refined imported oil.

However it looks as if the jinx is about to be broken since the hegemonic forces appear to be in retreat partly because of Tinubu’s latest thrust. It is instructive to note here that PBAT has succeeded in doing the unprecedented by inserting the Naira as a transactional item in our oil business. No more the almighty dollar.

But in an overall sense: will he succeed? Can he succeed? If these questions can be answered positively, then Nigeria would have embarked on a path which should have been taken several years ago. But then, as the sage would say: better late than never.

But even then, there are matters arising from this latest phase of our adventure in the oil industry.

There is still much confusion about the pricing and how the product will get to the consumer. At a point in time, Dangote himself said he was waiting on the Federal Executive Council (FEC) as regards pricing. Again we were initially told that NNPC will be the sole off-taker of the products from the Dangote refinery. Meanwhile, as if NNPC is something of a scourge to the populace, it keeps breathing down our necks that the refined oil will not come cheap. And as we write, the street is not smiling as regards the availability and rising price of petrol.

PBAT himself has not helped matters, by his depositions all the way from China. Among other things, he was of the view that things will have to get worse, before they get better. True, and this is common place enough.

But what remains unaddressed is that under the current conditions, Nigeria only gets 5 percent of what is due to her from the industry. The rest is appropriated by wiser folks outside Nigeria.

In more plaintive terms, what is being said is this; over time since the inception of what passes for the Nigerian oil industry, we have failed to put in place backward linkages which would have catalysed our quest for industrialisation. For any country with a viable petrochemical industry (as well as a steel industry) would have successfully weaned itself from itself from unbridled importation which is the sad and tragic lot of our Nigeria, despite its oil.

So beyond all the noise about the Dangote refinery and the perennially-coming Port Harcourt refinery, the challenge is really how we can run a viable oil industry that will serve as the foundation of an industrialized Nigeria. Luckily for us, this is not rocket science.

Other social formations through their respective oil companies have been able to serve their countries in this critical area.
On this note, my specific references are to entities like: PETROBRAS (Brazil), SONATRACH (Algeria), PEMEX (Mexico), PETRONAS (Malaysia).

Against this background, my final poser to PBAT is this: Is it possible for us to learn from one or more these countries as regards how we can attain a breakthrough in this critical area?

As it is, the debates and discourses in this critical area of our oil industry have not even started. This, I believe is the ultimate challenge before this administration in the area of the oil industry-namely the task of putting in place backward linkages which will give a novel fillip to the Nigerian economy.

Permit to end here by saying that a number of individuals are well placed to drive this novel policy thrust. Such individuals include: Engineer Oladele Afolabi, Engineer Kayode Ojo, Austin Avuru, Cyril Obi and Professor Julius Ihonvbere.

Soremekun is the immediate past vice chancellor of Federal University Oye Ekiti.