“The countless man hours that will be spent at petrol stations today, will reduce our productivity as a nation.This should not be so.” ~ Candidate Muhammadu Buhari, Twitter (02/03/2015).
I burst into laughter on finding a meme that captures the frustrations of Nigerians whose businesses have suffered, and lifestyles frustrated, by the scarcity of fuel that has, for weeks now, been the nightmare of every Nigerian. It’s an image of a man with bloodied nose, captioned: “When you mistakenly shout “Sai Baba” in a fuel queue,” mocking the fanatical supporters of President Buhari.
I found it hilarious, and almost apt because, despite President Buhari’s popularity, you may not find a concurring chorus to that chant of the man’s messianic intervention in such awkward situations. Obviously not from car owners who had spent hours under scorching sun just to fill up their car.
Their anger may even be intensified by the policy that cans aren’t allowed for buying fuel at the stations, and thus those in cities that experience frequent and long power outage see their generator sets now more as a contraption with no use.
The meme may be an exaggeration of the possible reaction of the citizens to a government’s seeming inability to redeem a crisis of such economic impact, but it’s accurate in its attempt to insinuate that it takes such show of tact in dealing with a crisis for even the most popular governments to be portrayed as insensitive, and failing.
The riskiest issue here is the place of the President in this Oil sector.
The President doubling as Petroleum Minister of an Oil-dependent country at a crossroads must be likened to the rainmaker who summons the rain unaware that his umbrella isn’t handy.
I think the responsibility of a Petroleum Minister ought to have been “delegated” to any of the President’s trustworthy men, just for him to ride on calmer waves in reforming our institutions.
He ought to be a vigilant supervisor instead of this globetrotting man who shares photos of his trips more than the policy directions we hanker to read and critique.
But the President still has passionate believers, the “order is more vital than speed” ideologues to who many of us are also quick to explain that action is also more vital than slogan. We must apply the reverse of the President’s logic to dismiss the unsuitability of sluggish in fixing a problem in the sector on which the economy and life of the country revolves.
Buhari isn’t the first to inherit an institutionally and even physically destroyed country. When General Olusegun Obasanjo took over as Nigeria’s President in 1999, riding on a maddening enthusiasm to recover all stolen from us, he set up the Oputa Panel to assure us he wasn’t bluffing. Note that this example isn’t a suggestion for such commission of enquiry to expose what the EFCC was established to achieve.
This example is just an example, that a courageous confrontation of our problems had taken place in recent past.
The hard truth is, Body Language isn’t the official language of government. We need a reassuringly loud and unshaken voice giving orders for a new Nigeria. We need policy directions more than we do photographs of the President in well-embroidered kaftan littering our timelines.
The sectoral leaders of the country, our not-so-recently-appointed Ministers, have also not begun to show us thematic promised by the administration. In fact, in our dear Abuja, the only impact of the FCT Minister one has experienced is having Life Camp district, where his official residence is located, experience its first “internal traffic gridlock”, as visitors to his residence took over our parking spaces. And yet Abuja is in ruins, and even its streetlights are dysfunctional.
What the President has to protect his public image as he tries to figure out how we wants to end the fuel queues at our filling nations nationwide is the soap opera that is our arms contract scandal, in which the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki, is a lead character.
This storm of financial scandals about to consume the recently ousted ruling elite, shouldn’t spare any accomplice; those whose greed contributed to the ruins of this unfortunate nation.
Never to be spared by the President are his predecessor under whose watch those criminals got the approvals to steal and the custodian(s) of our treasury – the CBN Governor(s) and executives of relevant institutions – who were willing witnesses to these frauds.
The best way to draw a line is by setting an example with these big cats. The blood of innocent citizens wasted by their deliberate pact to deprioritize our counterterrorism should be paid for, with a deserved justice.
But the reality of this fuel scarcity won’t make us concentrate on this soap about the false claims of purchasing arms to boost our counterterrorism in the last administration. The economy loses money every minute a Nigerian spends I the fuel queue. Asking this nation of crumbling economy to be patient while unexplained reforms are being carried out, while our barber couldn’t open shop because of fuel scarcity, while the workforce of many vital firms spend more time in fuel queues than in their offices, is the wisdom of an uncreative manager. May God save us from us!
