By OBI NWAKANMA

Readers of the “Orbit” may have noticed the absence of this column in the last month. Well, I have to occasionally be on a break from this column and from the affairs of the world, whose enormity sometimes can overwhelm even the most practical and sanest of men.

The columnist sometimes has to fear the Law of Thermodynamics and the possibilities of a burn-out, and therefore needs to pause. Silence in this case can be rejuvenating, especially when you begin to have the strange feelings in your gut that you have somehow said everything you’ve been placed on this earth to say, and nothing else can be said.

And it might all very well be true. But as I often tell students in my Creative Writing class, all stories may have been told, but sometimes, across our lines of vision, a small smear of insight may lie waiting, that might give the world just something to think about; it is that unending corner of the great story, the end to which we never finish to arrive because every story carries a child or a twin, or a surprising turn towards a new and unremarked road.We also discover in our absence that the world has given birth to new mysteries while we were gone.

The Wheel turns unendingly, and the indifferent universe continues to act with its studied indifference. All this is my way of saying, the world did not wait for the “Orbit” and I thank all those who sent me personal mails to inquire about my well-being and about when I’d return to the grind.

And the “Orbit” returns this week with the story, as everyone may have heard, of the fall of Nigeria’s crude sale to the United States, since the 1970s, Nigeria’s biggest trading partner and largest importer of Nigeria’s crude oil.

Export receipts and data from the US Energy Information Administration indicate that the US has had zero oil import from Nigeria since July, and it is trending. Zilch! The implication for Nigeria’s economy is humongous, not to talk about its foreign and domestic policy. This has of course been long in the making.

Shale production from America’s vast fields has made the US no longer dependent on oil importation from countries like Nigeria, whose Bonny light was for years, because of its low sulfur, the champagne of crude oil.

The United States in fact is set to begin oil exports and will begin a trend that will make the oil glut of the 1980s seem like a pool party. It is still not clear whether Nigerians understand the implications of the coming decade, particularly in the light of the low public investment in infrastructure and industry that would have given Nigeria a competitive edge in a post-oil world. The wasted years of oil prosperity will haunt Nigerians for a long time.

There is also the other dimension of Nigeria’s place in the world. As a powerful oil producing nation, Nigeria had some leverage in the international world of politics.

It had resources to finance its status and oil with which it could use to apply diplomatic pressure. But as the place or importance of oil begin to rapidly wane, what else could provide leverage for Nigeria in the current world? Its human population? Certainly, there is potential market there. But a mostly poor population can become a time bomb rather than an asset or a market.

The most populous country in Africa can very easily become “Africa’s most populous and poorest nation.” Population is an asset only if it has the kind of liquidity that can finance and sustain desire. For years, Nigeria’s relationship with the United States, its major trading partner was based on its regular supply to the United States of a highly needed product. Now that America no longer needs Nigeria for its oil, there will be a fundamental shift – indeed a degradation of relations in the scale of importance to America’s strategic interest and alliances.

The inevitable move by Nigeria to redirect Nigeria’s oil sales and receipts, and general trading relationships towards the Asian economies, particularly China and India, will reshape Nigeria’s own strategic foreign policy thrust, with the likelihood that it too will degrade the importance of its diplomatic and trade relationship with the United States.

The full consequences are not yet clear, but it is quite true, and indeed very safe to imagine more flights from Nigeria to Beijing and Mumbai or Delhi than to London or Washington DC in the coming decades. Indeed, perhaps the Indian Ocean might become Africa’s busiest transnational corridor in the coming movement of goods, services, and populations in the coming decades of the 21st century. These challenges have received little political attention or traction yet in the discussions shaping around the coming elections of 2015. What that election will bring certainly wears a hat.

But let us make two very tentative observations with regards to the emerging scenario: the first observation is the increasing geo-political realignments that have increasing significance to Nigeria’s contemporary political life. While some media Talking-heads continue to discuss Nigerian politicsin terms of a North and a South, what is obvious is that these boundaries have shifted radically. It ought to have been clear, in the pattern of the votes cast in the 2010 elections that the North-South question has now been replaced by new geographies of desires and political action.

The second is that Muhammadu Buhari, former Major-General and one-time Nigeria’s military Head of state has declared, once again, his interest in contesting the 2015 Presidential elections under the APC platform, as has Mr. Atiku Abubakar, former Custom’s officer and former Vice-President of Nigeria.

So far these two gentlemen represent the biggest challengers to the incumbent President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, Marine Scientist and former University lecturer, now president.

But what alternatives do they bring to the table? Buhari says he is on a “rescue mission” at over seventy- five years of age, to save Nigeria from what his supporters see as Jonathan’s lackluster administration.

Here is not the place yet to discuss the viability or not of each of these candidates, but I just like to emphasize that developments in international energy production is bound to affect Nigeria’s balance of trade and liquidity profile very radically, and Nigerians need to understand what they are in for.

Reduced cash flow will mean further trim in government services; massive unemployment; liquidity crunch; the late 1980s and early 1990s once again. It might require a survivor’s chart: store up food, soap; medicine, and other supplies, dig-inand prepare for the lean years, or otherwise, find out from these candidates their plans for dealing with the coming reality.

Truth be told, whoever wins the Nigerian presidency in 2015 will inherit a most radically different economic world with potentially devastating consequences. Nigeria therefore needs a solid economic manager to head its team and design the recovery effort after the approaching Tsunami.