Nigeria is an interesting place, it is a pot-pourri of many things, the good, the bad and the ugly.Despite the greatness it holds potentially and the possibilities of a bright future.It has been blighted by its people.I always ask Nigerians jokingly to confess their sins to Nigeria.It is akin to the Catholic confession model.I say that because the internal turpitude of its people constantly blights its prospect.It’s rich lush landscape is polluted by its people with illegal refineries, it’s delta and mangrove forests have been mangled because of the treacherous despicable desire by people not to preserve the environment.It’s good climate is not put into good use.Some will argue vociferously, that the problem is leadership, but this argument is false without including the follower ship. It is like saying that only a striker should be blamed when a football team loses a game.The game of scarcity of fuel has been on for a while,Only last month, there were fears about removing subsidies and the government backtracked due to political reasons and pledged another 3 trillion of monies.Isn’t it shocking, over the years, how we have continuously paid subsidies without thinking of building refineries, isn’t it bewildering, that after the 2012 subsidy protest, nobody deemed it fit to build a refinery.Aren’t we jokers?.It is the responses that shock me the most about this current crisis, a report recently released by the Guardian in the UK enunciates the terrible quality of our fuel import,asserting the environmental effect of this and the terrible pollution caused by this fuel,but Alas!Nothing has been done about it.
All of a sudden, magic happens, After paying big subsidies we claim to have imported toxic fuel, isn’t it shocking! in a country of over 200million people, not one, NOT ONE had the presence of mind to ascertain the quality of import and I am sure NNPC will get funding for quality control just like we spend billions on our refineries every year and no fuel or just like we pay for Ajaokuta every year, but we import steel to build rail lines.While this pantomime continues, The Association of road transport owners-obviously those that carry our petroleum products around threatened a strike, because of increasing cost, so the plot of that strike is to be an alibi for the scarcity I think-I watched yesterday how NARTO simply said, logistics for carrying products is not worth the money.The premise for the scarcity initially was bad fuel now a NARTO strike, then there is a third Alibi, which the Nigerian Labour congress in its reaction says, the recent fuel scarcity is a conspiracy by the government to remove subsidies and labour will resist all that.
In amazement, I don’t know what the cause of the scarcity, is it is akin to the story in “Murder on the Orient express” by Agatha Christie, where everyone in the train had a motive to kill the victim.Hence, My earlier theory of the problem of Nigeria being caused by its people.In the middle of all this, the poor continue to suffer, some that have the chance, continue to relocate, we continue to build an inequitable society,Money rituals continue, iniquity continues to take over society.I think we must ask ourselves the critical questions about socialization of our society? How long can we last with this imbalance
