Nigeria is hostage to the petroleum cabal, the electricity cabal, diesel monopoly, generator cabal, Cement|Sugar|Rice monopolies, steel import cabal and several other layers of economic and political saboteurs who hamper, marginalise and diminish our national development aspirations and security complex. Nigeria’s situation is made more complex given their amoral daliance with apostates who hide under religion while transfixed in zealous covetousness of Nigeria’s milk and honey and the pockets of its citizens.
Nigeria is a huge racket and a vast criminal enterprise. Major General Smedley Butler of the United States Marine Corp would easily have been describing Nigeria in his famous 1933 speech – WAR is a racket. He defined a racket “as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.” What we have thriving with relish in Nigeria is a racket. It is gangster capitalism by a privileged few against ordinary Nigerians.
The times are turbulent, if not perilous. Nigeria is dead broke, economic stagnation stares us in the face due to an economy hinged on a single product that is fast falling out of favour, an exploding youth population, non-existent infrastructure, and a country immersed in corruption, mediocrity and impunity. The country faces terrorism, education deficits and the serious environmental scourge of desertification in the North, oil spillage and joblessness in the Niger Delta, erosion and fledging narcotics trade in the South-East, while other regions are swimming in their own oceans of despondency. The gradation of threats confronting the country is brought about by active racketeers and profiteers in principalities and high places, who fatten their wallets at a grave cost they never could pay.
Who are these faceless cabals? Without the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), there is no cabal. Actually, the NNPC is the cabal. The marketers are only in an unholy alliance. The NNPC imports kerosine with federal money for about $30 million per vessel, it sells it to marketers for $10 million, and marketers sell it to Nigeria for $30m. The pocketed $20m is shared by the NNPC syndicate and the marketers.
For the sake of money from the oil in the Chad basin and for political supremacy, a small non-violent sect was appropriated and armed by greedy, power thirsty Nigerians and their foreign collaborators for violent confrontation with their own people and the Nigerian state. Because of the ambitions of a few, the cost in lost lives, traumas in battle, the lasting effects of terror, mass slaughter and deprivations visited upon the North-East will haunt Nigeria for a long time. Who are those who stumped for terror? Who are those who reaped great profits from its carnages? Who are the importers of weapons? Who are those profit-only business mavens connected with the massive security mega plexus associated with war profiteers and their respective investors, bankers and diplomatic deceivers? Nigeria is hostage to the petroleum cabal, the electricity cabal, diesel monopoly, generator cabal, Cement|Sugar|Rice monopolies, steel import cabal and several other layers of economic and political saboteurs who hamper, marginalise and diminish our national development aspirations and security complex. Nigeria’s situation is made more complex given their amoral daliance with apostates who hide under religion while transfixed in zealous covetousness of Nigeria’s milk and honey and the pockets of its citizens.
For those shouting for the removal of subsidy, you are up against racketeers. This is Nigeria, nothing will change even after removing the subsidy. I have no doubt, you have given no deep thought to the veritable consortium of oppressors who are against citizens’ and national interests, our welfare and collective morality. In their enhanced positions, they continue to plague Nigerians with greater impetus for oppression. In 2009, kerosene subsidy was eliminated by a directive from the office of the late president Umaru Yar’Adua. Since then, nowhere in the country is kerosene sold at a subsidised rate. Kerosine still sells at over N200.00 per litre. At the rate kerosine is sold to the common man, an economic rent of about $20 million dollars is realised per vessel of kerosine brought into the country by the subsidy addicted cabal. Who are these faceless cabals? Without the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), there is no cabal. Actually, the NNPC is the cabal. The marketers are only in an unholy alliance. The NNPC imports kerosine with federal money for about $30 million per vessel, it sells it to marketers for $10 million, and marketers sell it to Nigeria for $30m. The pocketed $20m is shared by the NNPC syndicate and the marketers.
Buhari will not be successful until he kills the NNPC and give it a decent burial. Just then, maybe a new creature can rise from the ashes of its decay. Also, in the shadows within the same sector, is a criminal enterprise on an industrial scale. It rivals the narcotics trade as the world’s most lucrative crime – oil theft.
If anyone is still in doubt, when the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi took on the cabals by revealing the fleecing of Nigeria, he was promptly removed from office and hounded afterwards, even after becoming the Emir of Kano. This is because it is the cheapest source of funds for politicians, public servants and their cronies. Unfortunately for all hard-working Nigerians, the billions of dollars in deductions for petrol subsidies are funded outside the legal budgetary framework. The NNPC imports twice the need of Nigerians but supplies half and takes the other half to neighbouring countries for sale or just collects twice the money and import only half of what it claims. Is there any way to easier riches than that? The NNPC cannot provide evidence that the fuel it claimed to have imported actually arrived the shores of Nigeria. The oil racket, also involves international and local traders.
As Buhari gets sworn in this week, I can only wish him luck. I hope he lays the condition of the treasury bare as soon as he can. He should let us know the scale of the mess he inherited for him to secure our understanding. We are aware, the transition team got no cooperation because no books were kept, the money was just spent until it finished. We need to know how big a mess we are in so we can plan the clean up.
The crude oil swaps in which oil is exchanged for refined fuel imports without cash changing hands is an opaque arrangement that is very costly to the Nigerian state. Between 200,000 to 220,000 barrels per day is given in swaps. No one can ascertaining the true value of the swaps because the contract documents are destroyed a year after contract termination. The way we are in Nigeria, with the legal loophole, every year, contracts will be terminated and a new one agreed to, for the purpose of wiping off trails. Buhari will not be successful until he kills the NNPC and give it a decent burial. Just then, maybe a new creature can rise from the ashes of its decay. Also, in the shadows within the same sector, is a criminal enterprise on an industrial scale. It rivals the narcotics trade as the world’s most lucrative crime – oil theft. It involves the politicians, an amalgam of the security forces, oil industry big boys, oil traders and militant groups in a complex network of crime with a sophisticated organisation. Who will bust this powerful criminal syndicate of thieves?
Muhammadu Buhari faces a daunting task. Let no one be deceived, many people who count in Nigeria are moral degenerates, who love money so much but cannot summon the balls to earn it for themselves without creating vacuous shells of sufferers along the way. The few manufacturing concerns in the country are either monopolies or oligopolies which fix prices to fleece Nigerians and screw them royally. Beyond debate, Nigeria is a corporation owned by racketeers where profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. It is a jungle of the unaccountables littered with newly placed gravestones, mangled bodies, shattered minds, broken hearts, broken homes, suicide-inducing economic distress, depression and every other misery possible. Worse, we will have to contend with back-breaking debt with nothing to show for it.
As Buhari gets sworn in this week, I can only wish him luck. I hope he lays the condition of the treasury bare as soon as he can. He should let us know the scale of the mess he inherited for him to secure our understanding. We are aware, the transition team got no cooperation because no books were kept, the money was just spent until it finished. We need to know how big a mess we are in so we can plan the clean up. I have no doubt that Buhari will have to take an IMF loan unless he can get some stolen funds back. How can he go on with governance without bogging his government down in prosecuting these thieves? It can be done; I’m sure he will figure it out. Too much high crimes have been committed. In all, I thank God on your behalf that Jonathan did not win the election. We would have begged to be sold to China. May God save us from the evil of ourselves.
Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú maintains a weekly column on Politics and Socioeconomic issues every Tuesday. She is a member of Premium Times Editorial Board. Twitter @olufunmilayo.
