By Tunde Abatan tunde2013abatan@gmail.com 08165660217
Governance is politics by other means.
It is politics because it involves choices to be made and those choices in turn are determined by politics of preference and discretion of leaders thoughts at different points in time.
When power is sought by politicians various methods are used chief of which are Lies and Propaganda.
Lies are made to promise what is not feasible within the realms of possibility while they are clothed with propaganda to sound real and achievable.
In Nigeria,citizens have become so immune to the antics of politicians who transform to leaders using people’s votes to climb up.
To secure people’s votes,our politicians and public office seekers concort series of lies to cajole and persuade electorate who are not privy to their inner thoughts to cast their lot with them.
While some vote trusting that their vote will count and promises made to them kept,others vote based on pecuniary gains through monetary incentives or gifts while yet others vote for sentiments based on ethnic and religious considerations.
In all this,politicians and office seekers have no qualms whether they deliver on their promises or not. Since they lack conscience, politicians tell the same lies all over from one election period to the other recycling promises and giving excuses here and there why they fail.
Such excuses are often given when another round of election are near the corner.
In 2014,during electioneering campaign to usher in President Muhammadu Buhari, the All Progressives Congress,APC candidate who have tried thrice but failed to get Nigerians vote, promised to build one Refinery every year of his first four years term.
Now with almost seven years in office and a year to the end of his second term, the three refineries which has done several rounds of Turn Arround Maintenance,TAM that Nigerians have lost count,are still being turned around with several millions of dollars to the bargain yet none of them was near it’s refinery capacity.
Indeed, the Kaduna refinery has not had a single barrel refined in the last five years yet N10 billion were spent yearly to run it’s operations.
Today,the three refineries at Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri are still struggling to spend the $26.5billion dollars approved for the Federal government to Turn them arround by the light fingered National Assembly which has become the biggest clearing house for unimaginable things and policies conjured by the Buhari government.
This is not surprising because, Dr Ahmed Lawan ,the Senate President had told Nigerians on assumption that the NASS was not elected to oppose government.
It is also not surprising that today, sixteen months to end of President Buharis second term of four years tenure, no single refinery has been built contrary to his soap box promise in 2015.
On the contrary, the nation producing 2.5million barrels of crude per day still spends billion of naira to import the crude she sold to foreign refineries.
As at Saturday January 2022, the price of North Brent..which is Nigerias export crude oil in the international market has climbed to $96 United States dollars per barrel.
The loser in this respect are Nigerians who have to contend with excuses as to why they should pay more than the present N162 naira on a litre of fuel even as an oil producing giant.
As for government, for as long as the refineries are not working and the price of crude in the international market keeps on climbing,so is the dubious Trillions of naira government has to spend to subsidize for them will continue to increase.
To the government which failed to either repair or built new refineries since 1978, refusing to remove subsidy is akin to playing father Xmas to those who elected them to improve their lives.
But then, Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed,while disclosing federal government’s decision not to remove the subsidy which would’ve shut up pump price of PMS- petroleum motor spirit to N302 per litre, ask Nigerians to be prepared to make the necessary sacrifice and bear the brunt….yes brunt of increasing foreign and domestic loans and attendant taxes to fund the budget.
This would further compound the economic woes of the ordinary citizens.
In whichever way you look at it, Nigerians are still the losers.
Even when Minister of state for Oil,Timphre Sylva, announced that government will continue it’s magnanimity by shifting the date for removing subsidy, the people knew he was playing politics of power.
To those who can reason beyond their nose,they knew quite well that the federal government is only postponing the evil day which will come. It will come early next year after they’ve cajoled those hapless citizens they’ve been deceiving since 2015 to vote them in again.
For Sylva to dubiously promise heaven and earth that subsidy will not be removed until refineries are working, is akin to a long sentence to deceit and gridding poverty.
Deceit, because it is curious how a government that couldn’t fix three refineries for seven years, could by any known magic fix such in twelve months when votes of the masses are given to them to renew their mandate under dubious circumstances, to continue the oppression.
That a federal government that has been flaring gas since 1975 will suddenly wake up to stop flaring in twelve months is a grand deceit of the century.
Such systemic deceit will continue for as long as Liars and visionless leaders are in the corridors of power.
Also apparent is the fact that the hundreds of thousands of impoverish car owners cannot get the wherewithal to convert their outdated cars to gas or electric which is as epileptic and inadequate as the state of roads on which those vehicles are running.
While they strain and pay through the nose for making their vehicles roadworthy, nobody is striving to make the roads vehicle worthy.
Now,with seventeen months to the end of the eight year tenure,nobody is telling us the stage of repair of the refineries for which additional $1.5billion cost to the initial $25billion earlier budgeted has been granted.
This makes the total cost of Turn Around Maintenance to N$26.5billion enough to build three brand new refineries.
Only last week,the federal government was said to have processed $98million and N17.2billion as partial payment for the on going rehabilitation of the Port Harcourt Refinery Company.
Besides,it also made an initial deposit payment of $194million dollars being the 15% advance payment for the rehabilitation of the facility to Tecnimart Spot of Italy.
Yet, Aliko Dangotte,a man who bought the Kaduna and Port Harcourt refineries one year to the end of former President Olusegun Obasanjos tenure, but had it terminated by I’ll advise given to late President Umaru Yaradua, has managed to build worlds second biggest refinery with $65billion dollars while our President who has been in the saddle still remains in his dream. You wonder when he will begin to see vision.
If it takes twenty years for a man to prepare for madness,how long would it take to get cured , apology to late winner of annulled June 12 election, Moshood Kashimawo Abiola.
One would have expected President Buhari to perform the magic he was once reputed for while he was Petroleum Minister in mid 70s to at least built one Refinery to give competition to Dangotte, a businessman who has attained rare monopoly in Cement ,Sugar and production of other necessities.
On the contrary,the federal government, by design it would appear,has unwittinghly helped him to achieve his dream of presence in every home in Nigeria.
His world class refinery will complete that.
Deferring the removal of subsidy is also clear mandate to Dangotte to finish his refinery scheduled for June this year and assume a monopoly in another key sector nobody can do without.
He will now supply the whole of Nigeria with refined fuel from his $65 billion refinery producing at 650,000 barrels per day far more than the 35 million litres of fuel which is Nigerias daily consumption.
In other words, Nigerias decades old three refineries with total refinery capacity of 445,000 barrels per day is being systematically rendered comatose by the window given Dangote’s refineries to complete its monopoly of Nigeria’s economy.
With election around the corner,the federal government via the ruling party will reel out new unattainable promises which unfortunately the economically traumatized Nigerians will have little to resist given our lack of culture of resistant to obnoxious policies especially helped by grinding poverty all over.
Besides,our lame labour movement leadership through the Nigeria Labour Congress,NLC, has over the years failed to demonstrate capacity to resist obnoxious government policies which emanated from inept leadership which lacks vision and compassion.
The next few months when government will roll out fresh tax drives to fund its budget which itself rely on loans, will be an interesting phase in the life of the country.
