MANY years ago, our primary-six teacher caused a paroxysm of laughter in class when he taught us the history of the slave trade. What actually caused the laughter was that the teacher told us that in exchange for human beings, the European traders offered our forebears mirrors. In our young minds, we felt that our fore fathers were the original “mumus”.  What a terrible bargain they made, we said to ourselves.

As a young boy also, I was in the house of one of my relations whose wife traded in ogogoro, when one of her customers who liked to show off his knowledge of the English language came in and asked to be served illicit gin. At that time, I thought that the English name for ogogoro was ‘illicit gin’, until the day my uncle gave me a lesson on how our colonial rulers used branding to destroy our local industry and culture and traditions.

He explained to me that the local alcoholic brew that we callogogoro wascompeting for market with the more expensive dry gin imported from Britain, and the colonial masters did not like it. To deal a lethal blow to the competition, they declared it illegal or illicit, which forced its production and consumption underground.

Incidentally, I was in the village recently and someone still referred to ogogoro as illicit gin, 52 years after Nigeria’s independence. I am now inclined to think that marketing departments in our universities have something to learn from this about branding and how it affects development.

Indeed, even our Sociology and Anthropology Departments also have fertile research fields in this area. Take our native languages for example, they were branded as ‘vernacular’ and forbidden in our schools and only English language was permitted to be spoken and taught. Today, many in my generation carried that ‘vernacular” branding of our native tongues into their adult lives. Consequently, most of us ended up failing to teach our children our local languages with the result that many of the native languages now run the risk of going into extinction.

Based on the foregoing, each time I am confronted with screaming newspaper headlines and photos of JTF destroying what they describe as ‘illegal crude oil refineries’ in the Niger Delta, my thoughts go back to the story of illicit gin and vernacular branding of our native tongues.

I have continued to wonder what really makes these refineries illegal.I am reminded that the earliest crude oil refineries were not designed or built like the Warri Refinery and Petrochemical Plant. Indeed, before World War II, most petroleum refineries in the United States consisted simply of crude oil distillation unitswhich were referred to as atmospheric crude oil distillation units.

It was much later that vacuum distillation units as well as thermal cracking units such as viscosity breakers, for lowering the viscosity of the oil, were added to the refineries.  In its most elementary form, the refining of crude oil is simply the heating up of crude oil to very high temperatures until the molecular components begin to separate into different products. In fact, the first product of the refining process of crude oil was kerosene which was needed for illumination and had earlier been obtained from coal.

As technology transformed with the introduction of internal combustion engines and its use in automobiles, airplanes and various complex machineries, higher octane grades of gasoline or fuel were required and these are obtained from a process of catalytic reforming, which involves removing hydrogen from hydrocarbons to produce compounds with higher octane ratings.

It seems to me therefore, that thinking of crude oil refineries only as units like the Warri, Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries misses the point of its function and technological evolution, and by branding our indigenous efforts as ‘illegal refineries’ we run the risk of losing the opportunity to develop our own indigenous oil and gas technology.

I have often wondered if the reason the refineries JTF destroyed in the Niger Delta are branded as illegal is that they are not registered and licensed or because their products are sub-standard.  I am not aware that anyone has so far explained to Nigerians whether theproducts of the ‘illegal refineries’ in the Niger Delta are sub-standard. In the absence of such an explanation, it becomes necessary to pause for a second and re-examine the full implication of this branding of our indigenous industry as ‘illegal’.

Nigeria today is grappling with low capacity in domestic refining of crude oil leading to massive dependence on importation of refined products,huge subsidy costs and constant pressure on the exchange rate of the Naira. In addition, there is high rate of unemployment, especially among the youths as a result of low industrial capacity. With this condition of the economy, one is at a loss whether the destruction of indigenous refineries branded ‘illegal’ is a smart response to the evolving technology.

If government were to set regulations and standards and scrupulously enforce them to govern the operations of the refineries, including licensing, access to crude, environmental standards and product standards, would the energies of these indigenous entrepreneurs not be better managed and channeled to address the low refining capacity of the nation, create jobs for jobless youths and reduce pressure on our external reserves?Would it not, in fact, represent the beginning of our technological breakthrough in the oil and gas sector?

As I mull over another newspaper report of yet another destruction of ‘illegal refineries’ in the Niger Delta by the JTF, I try to visualize the reaction of a primary six class perhaps, one hundred years from now, as they are taught that at a time when the present generation of Nigerians were importing refined petroleum products, some smart youths figured out the refining process using indigenous technology and the response of the authority was to brand them ‘illegal’ and destroy them, so that we can continue to import refined petroleum products and the youths remain jobless.

I can imagine the class erupting in guffaws at how stupid we, their fore bears were; the same way my own class, years ago laughed at our fore fathers who exchanged slaves for mirrors. Unfortunately, the folly of this generation is unpardonable given that we had the opportunity of learning everything the White man knows unlike our fore bears.

Mr. CLEMENT OFUANI, a political analyst, wrote from Asaba, Delta State.