Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has expressed concern over youths’ restiveness caused by unemployment, fearing that Nigeria might be sitting on a keg of gunpowder. Obasanjo made the statement during an interview with the Financial Times.
“Our youth are restive. And they are restive because they have no skill. They have no empowerment. They have no employment. We are all sitting on a keg of gunpowder. And my prayer is that we will do the right thing before it’s too late,” he warned.
The elder statesman’s stance comes following ongoing #Endbadgovernance nationwide protests by the youths over hunger and hardship in the country. Youths across the country have embarked on protests since August 1, a development that has since escalated with reports and incidents of violence and looting recorded across the country.
Speaking further, Obasanjo said Nigeria’s economy would have been much better if it had not relied on just crude oil production. He described the country’s reliance on crude oil as a “deadly mistake.”
“I believe we made a deadly mistake by putting all our eggs in one basket by relying on oil. We had a very important commodity, gas, but we were flaring it,” he said.
Obasanjo criticized the failure of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), the International Oil Companies, and other national oil companies to ramp up oil production to meet the country’s needs. He suggested that Nigeria could have invested more in agriculture instead of crude oil.
“We ignored agriculture, which could have been the centerpiece of our investment,” he said.
The former president then touched on the reason that Nigeria’s four refineries have remained moribund despite huge investments and attempts at revamping them. He recalled how he persuaded Shell to run the country’s refineries, but the International Oil Company refused, citing too much corruption in the sector.
“When I was president, I invited Shell to come and take equity and run our refineries for us. They refused and said our refineries were not well maintained. We brought amateurs instead of professionals. Then there was too much corruption in the way our refineries were maintained. They didn’t want to get involved in such a mess,” he said.
He condemned the government’s disposition towards getting the refineries back on their feet.
“How many times have they told us that the refineries would be fixed, and at what price? Those problems, as far as the government refineries are concerned, have never gone. They have even increased. And if you have such problems, and the problems have not been removed, then it means we are not going anywhere.”
He said that those benefiting from the lucrative business of fuel importation are going to make efforts to frustrate the Dangote Petroleum Refinery.
Obasanjo stated this in the wake of allegations by the President of the Dangote Group, Aliko Dangote, that some ‘mafias’ were making efforts to frustrate the $20bn refinery.
“Aliko’s investment in a refinery, if it goes well, should encourage both Nigerians and non-Nigerians to invest in Nigeria. If those who are selling or supplying refined products for Nigeria feel that they will lose the lucrative opportunity, they will also make every effort to get him frustrated,” Obasanjo stated.
Officials of the Dangote Group recently claimed that international oil companies were frustrating the refinery by refusing to sell crude or by selling to them at a premium up to $4 above the normal price. They also accused the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Regulatory Authority of deliberately granting licenses to individuals to import dirty fuel.
The regulator denied this, saying Dangote diesel was inferior compared to the imported ones. The NMDPRA Chief Executive, Farouk Ahmed, also stated that the country would not stop fuel importation to avoid a monopoly by the Dangote Group.
The former President also condemned the style adopted by President Bola Tinubu to remove fuel subsidies, stating that the present administration should have first considered the hardship the subsidy removal could cause people and how to ameliorate it.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done. Not just wake up one morning and say you removed the subsidy. Because of inflation, the subsidy that we have removed is not gone. It has come back,” the former President stressed.
He said there must be investor confidence in Nigeria, adding, “You have to go from a transactional economy to a transformational economy.”
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