In June 2016, David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. His reason, He believed the UK was better off as a member of the European Union, but the people, in a referendum, decided to leave.
This resignation was shocking as Cameron had led his party to a surprise majority in the general election a year earlier.
Recently, Suella Braverman resigned as from her position as UK Home Secretary due to a rather dismissible error of sending official documents from her personal email.
In Africa, Christophe Dabire sacked himself and his entire cabinet for failing to control a wave of jihadist attacks that killed thousands while In Ivory Coast Patrick Achi initially took a similar decision when accused of incompetence.
However, in Nigeria, there is a general belief that public officials do not resign from positions due to job security, pleasure and royalty of high office as well as a general lack of integrity.
Unfortunately, Nigeria’s President, Muhammadu Buhari falls in the category of people who for several reasons known to them and their inner cohorts cannot accept accusations of ineptitude and resign.
This article does not reflect on why the Petroleum Minister has not resigned but why people no longer deem him worthy as occupant of that office.
As I have referenced in my previous articles, President Buhari may have given Nigerians his best but the numbers do not favour him and the weight of expectations the masses had, prior to his presidency have barely been met.
This Christmas, or in fact, ever quarter of 2022, Nigerians have found reasons to abuse the Minister and wonder why he has failed to prevent a repeat of the queues that characterised the preceding administrations.
I have recently heard a couple of APC Chieftains argue that this is the only fuel scarcity in the country since 2015 but they must have attempted a fast play on the sometimes short memories of Nigerians.
As far as the records show, the only period there was no queue was in 2018 and 2020(because of the Covid 19 lockdown) while mild queues were reported in 2021.
In all of these, The Minister of Petroleum has, in the last seven years, failed to make any concrete statements addressing any of these long queues.
While the President has not been accused of any form of corruption, his stay and silence as Minister of Petroleum remains untenable as it makes no sense that despite voting over four trillion naira in subsidies for 2022 and Senate approval of over N3.6trn for subsidy in 2023, Nigerians are still lining up behind long lines to buy fuel at over N230 naira as against the official price of N165 naira.
As Minister of Petroleum, Buhari is yet to publicly sanction those who compromised and brought in contaminated petrol into the country earlier this year. In 7 years, he has failed to get any refinery working.
Having protested against removal of subsidies in 2012, Buhari was lucky enough to quietly adjust pump price from N87 to N145 and his administration has so far tinkered with the possibility of further removals with minimum protests from Nigerians.
If the President indeed possesses any iota of integrity as he has been bandied to – what moral right has he to pay or push for the removal of fuel subsidies when he protested against same in 2012.
Unfortunately, the National Assembly have equally failed to exercise their powers by summoning the President in his capacity as head of the oil ministry to address these concerns.
I am sure that President Buhari knows that he has failed to do his best as Minister of Petroleum. He may continue to bear the title till the end of his tenure but in the minds of Nigerians, he is no different from Mohammed Nanono (Agriculture) and Sale Mamman (Power) who he sacked last year.
Someone needs to tell Mr Petroleum to sack himself as Minister of Petroleum, appoint someone else and save us a repeat of such unfair cramming of titles in the future.
PS: Trust Nigerians to continue to rain abuses on Mr Minister of Petroleum Resources as they line up behind long queues to get fuel for the festive season.
