Obasanjo raises alarm on an impending civil unrest

By Obiabin Onukwugha

Former Nigeria’s President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo has stated that the decision to abandon agriculture and rely solely on crude oil revenues is the reason for the country’s economic woes and hardship.

Obasanjo, who ruled the country on return to Democratic rule after years of military interventions, between 1999 to 2007, also regretted that Nigeria has continued to flare her huge gas resources instead of utilising it for the good of the people.

The former president spoke during an interview session in a Documentary tagged: “Can Nigeria end the oil curse”, by the Financial Times, published on the 2nd of August 2024.

Obasanjo revealed that his administration approached Shell to run Nigeria’s refineries but the oil multinationals refused, citing issues of maintenance and corruption.

Obasanjo said: “We now live on oil, sleep on oil, which is unfortunate. Regular supply of refined products will definitely go a long way to help our economy. Now we have epileptic supply, queues, at petrol stations, many petrol stations running dry.

“I believe we made a very, very deadly mistake. We put all our eggs in one basket of oil, we even ignored gas, we were flaring gas which is a very important commodity. We ignored agriculture which should have been the centrepiece of our economic development.

“And when I was President I invited Shell and I said look, come and take equity participation and run our refineries for us, they refused. They said our refineries have not been well maintained, we have brought amateurs rather than bring professionals. They said there’s too much corruption with the way our refineries are run and maintained and they didn’t want to get involved in such a mess.”

On fixing the refineries, he continued: ” How many of this have they told us that, and at what price. Those problems as far as government refineries are concerned have never gone, they have even increased. So if you have a problem like that and that problem is not removed then you ain’t going anywhere.”

The former president posited that Aliko Dangote’s investment in refinery if well managed, can encourage both Nigerians and non-Nigerians to invest in the country.

He attributed insecurity and youth restiveness in parts of the country to lack of opportunities for youths, warning that Nigeria is sitting on a keg of gunpowder.

Obasanjo further submitted that the fuel subsidy removal was ill-timed and not properly managed. “What hardship was it going to cause people, how are you going to ameliorate that. There’s a lot of work that needed to be done. You just woke up one morning and say you’ve removed subsidy. Because of inflation the subsidy that we have removed is not gone. It has come back.

“If those who are selling or supplying refined products for Nigeria feel that they will lose the lucrative opportunity and they will also make every effort to get them frustrated. And you cannot talk of boosting the economy when you are turning a blind eye at the issue of security.

“Our youths are restive and they are restive because they have no skill, they have no empowerment, they have no empowerment.

“We are all sitting on a keg of gunpowder and my prayer is that we will do the right thing before it is too late. There must be investor confidence created. You have to go from transactional economy to transformational economy,” he added.

Aliko Dangote, on his part revealed how he had to import cranes for his $20billion refinery building project. Dangote admitted that he had suspicions that his refinery was going to unsettle the cabals in Nigeria’s oil and gas business but not to the level with which he had to battle with them.

He stated: “In Africa there are no infrastructure so when had to look for cranes we couldn’t get cranes to even hire. When you are importing things into your country you are importing poverty and exporting jobs out. So we have to stop it. I knew that there will be a fight but I didn’t know that the mafia in oil, you know, they are stronger than the mafia in drugs.”

Also, an environmental activist, Mr. Fyneface posited that the Niger Delta communities have continued to suffer because of massive pollution in the environment.

“The Niger Delta people have been denied of their traditional means of livelihoods. In time past, in this very community that you see you can put your pot on fire and come to the back and throw your net and catch fish to put in the same pot that is on the fire. The entire water body is now dead and there is a need for both local and international attention to be drawn to this so that this place can be cleaned up and the people can have their livelihoods restored.

“The multinational oil companies are contributing to the destruction of the Niger Delta environment, we also have the new generation of polluters, artesanal crude oil refiners. It’s a very big process that employs more people more than some state governments in Nigeria. They vandalise the pipelines and they steal the crude oil. The youths here don’t believe they steal the crude oil, they believe they collect the crude oil because they said it is their God-given resources under their soil in their lands.”

He added that the illegal refining business is an organized process that involves big politicians and security agencies working in the Niger Delta region.

Furthermore, an Ogoni Staholder, High Chief Solomon Ndigbara said the agitation of the Ogonis and the Niger Delta region at large, is the need for the government to recognise the rights of host communities.

He regretted that most of the people who were involved in the Niger Delta agitation were not included in the Federal government amnesty programme because of corruption.