Our imperial minister by Wale Fatade

Last Thursday was a difficult day for most of us who reside and work in Lagos. The traffic was horrendous and it approached lockdown as we all struggled to navigate our ways from morning till evening. Not through any fault of Governor Akinwumi Ambode’s government who after an initial inchoate way of governance seemed to have find his feet, but through the inadequacies of our dear imperial minister of state for petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu. Doubling also as the group-managing director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC),
Mr. Kachikwu appeared overwhelmed with the demands of his office. The fuel queues were so long that those who were fortunate to get the precious commodity ended up burning it faster in attempts at escaping the gridlock.
The previous day, Mr. Kachikwu had put his foot in his mouth as he is wont to do by condescendingly telling Nigerians that he is not a magician and we should not expect any miracle from him in solving the logjam his government has thrown us into via inadequate petrol supply. “So over the next two months, we should see quite frankly a complete elimination of this,” were his exact words in response to when queues will disappear from our country.  Expectedly, the media reported the story from this angle spelling it out clearly to Nigerians that there would be two more months of agony and pain to endure before we can think of just driving in and filling our tanks. Expectedly, the NNPC spokesperson denied this correct reportage the next day in a statement blaming his former colleagues for the misinterpretation.

This was the second time that our Harvard trained swashbuckling minister will tell us that his mastery of the English language is so super that we don’t understand him. Remember the problem caused by his “unbundling” statement a few weeks earlier? Most newspapers I checked the next day after he made the “two months more statement” when interviewed by journalists after a meeting with President Muhammadu Buhari who is the petroleum minister lest we forget, with officials of National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association (PENGASSAN). Indeed a smart editor led his paper with that statement the next day, an example of good journalism. For someone who told us that he was not trained in magic to later declare that “it is quite frankly sheer magic that we even have the amount of product at the stations” during the same interview showed how insensitive some of our leaders could be.

The interview itself was revealing as it gave us a window into how some policies are not thought through before implementation by this government. Even if we pardon that last week was the first time our president had the time for a meeting with representatives of the two unions working in a critical sector of our economy, how do we explain the lacuna in the foreign exchange policy of this government vis-à-vis product importation by the NNPC and the so-called removal of petroleum subsidy? Kachikwu confirmed what some of us who follow the industry closely have known for some time, independent marketers are no longer involved in importation as they find it difficult to source for foreign exchange and then sell at controlled price without any bridge funding from the government. Beyond Lagos and Abuja, I’m not sure any town or city in Nigeria enjoys the N86.50 per litre as decreed by the government. Even in Lagos, this price is only obtainable in any outlet of major marketers after at least an hour stay on a queue. In the past week, more and more outlets brazenly sold at higher price above this price, so why continue with the pretence? Trips outside Lagos are usually revelatory moments for me as both sellers and buyers are contented with whatever price boldly displayed at filling stations.

The citizens’ plight is compounded more by an energy crisis that has seen power generation dropping significantly thereby increasing generators usage with many powered by petrol. No doubt, Kachikwu’s two months more statement would have given some marketers courage to start hoarding products knowing well that consumers are at their mercy. A filling station that I drive past daily as I go to work has been selling for N130 per litre with people boycotting it but the day after the minister’s statement, it was raised to N140 with a long queue to boot. The minister needs to weigh his words carefully before saying anything to the public. He should remember also that he is no longer in the rarefied Mobil offices where his word is law and few, if any, dare criticize him. He could also get a pocket English dictionary for easy reference.

STILL ON THE AGATU MASSACRES
A reader sent me a report by SB Morgen, titled Terror in the Food Basket – A look into the violence in North-Central Nigeria published last October. It is very scary and confirmed what I said two weeks ago that our government is only paying lip service to food security. The chilling account of what is going on in the area we call middle belt left me worried that something worse than Boko Haram is at our doors if we refused to tackle the low intensity war there. The loud silence of our leaders should worry us all.