By Aliyu Dogara
Nigerians are presently going through hard times. Nigeria is neither safe nor habitable. Under a clueless and seemingly helpless captain, the ship of state seems to be sinking faster and faster as the country moves closer and closer to Somalia.
Can we call Nigeria a failed state? The answer is yes. Or what else can we call the symptoms of failed state. Civil servants are crying over irregular pay, small businesses are folding, big companies are sacking their workers, crime is on the increase. People can no longer access legitimate pay. There is no fuel, total darkness has taken over the land. The weather is unfriendly as children can no longer sleep at night.
Life expectancy ratio is getting worse as Nigeria approaches the hobbesian state of nature where life is brutish, nasty and short.
Rather than confront the challenges head-on, the incompetent group of people we erroneously handed our destiny are either busy chasing shadows, blaming past leaders or telling us to hold the vandals responsible as they cannot perform magic.
These hard times remind one of the better days we seem to have left in our recent past. It reminds one of a certain gentleman who had a more competent Minister of Petroleum under whose reign we never had this scale of fuel crisis.
Dr. Goodluck Jonathan and his Minister of Petroleum, Diezani Alison-Madueke have in recent times been two of the most unfairly despised Nigerians. It is now appearing crystal clear to all and sundry that these two great Nigerians indeed did their best for this nation.
When Alison-Madueke was minister, we never had this level of cruel fuel scarcity. Aside that, Diezani seemed to have a better mastery of the oil and gas sector than Ibe Kachikwu who has been busy running from one press conference to the other and annoying Nigerians the more. Diezani would never in the midst of a bad situation look Nigerians in the eye and tell them to just be patient that she cannot do magic. It’s now becoming obvious that all the characters President Muhammadu Buhari has surrounded himself are just here to learn on the job. In fact, they have been busy fumbling on the job and playing kite with the fate and destiny of 170 million people.
Watching Kachikwu addressing journalists on the day he arrogantly said Nigerians should put up with fuel scarcity for another two months and that he couldn’t perform magic, it was obvious that the man was overwhelmed with the situation and the way he spoke that day showed a man who was frustrated because he was incompetent to handle the job.
This is in contrast with the public conduct of an elegant, delectable, confident and clear-headed lady called Diezani who did not only provide brilliant answers to questions but was always on hand to provide solutions to situations. She also introduced fundamental reforms that repositioned the oil and gas sector.
The duo of Jonathan and Alison-Madueke worked hard to fight the terrible cabal that had held the country to ransom for decades. That was why the jinx of incessant fuel queues was broken. It’s this simple task that that President Buhari and Kachikwu are now finding difficult to do. To them, governance is as difficult as rocket science.
Nothing underscores the cluelessness of the present order than the fact that President Buhari does not know what he really wants. He made a man NNPC GMD today only to announce him as Minister of state for Petroleum a few weeks later. Up till now, the President still does not know what to do with Kachikwu’s two conflicting positions. While the President as Minister of Petroleum holds two positions which he doesn’t know what to do with them, Kachikwu too doesn’t seem to know his left from his right and how to navigate between his two positions. One continues to wonder how Nigerians closed their eyes and handed over their destiny to this set of confused people.
In April 2010, President Goodluck Jonathan signed the Nigerian Content Act, which helped to increase the percentage of petroleum industry contracts awarded to indigenous Nigerian businesses – a reaction to the domination of the sector by foreign operators.
One of the most controversial policies introduced under Alison-Madueke was the government’s plan to remove state subsidies on fuel prices. Alison-Madueke supported the discontinuation of the subsidy on the grounds that it “poses a huge financial burden on the government, disproportionately benefits the wealthy, [and] encourages inefficiency, corruption and diversion of scarce public resources away from investment in critical infrastructure.”
This was a laudable idea but Nigerians were deceived by the powerful and corrupt cabal to protest against it. The massive, sponsored protests forced the government to rescind the decision and this is the problem we are still facing in this country.
Dr. Jonathan kept on telling Nigerians that despite his imperfections and the shortcomings of some of his lieutenants, he was still the best man to keep the job till 2019 but we wouldn’t listen as we preferred to learn the hard way.
Bottom line of the gist is that Diezani Alison-Madueke was the sole minister in charge of petroleum under Jonathan and there was consistent stability in fuel supply throughout the period. But now, we have two over-rated men, one minister and the other minister of state yet they can’t carry out the simplest task…
It’s now a case of what a woman can do, two men cannot do…
Aliyu Dogara, writes in from Bauchi State
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