By Rotimi Fasan

Four weeks on and Nigerians are yet 
to know the identity of the criminals who brought misery to their homes and finances through the importation of contaminated premium motor spirit, PMS, into the country.

It has so far been a game of buck-passing between the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, and the companies it claims imported the contaminated fuel.

Let’s be minded of the fact that until that debacle all Nigerians knew was that the NNPC was the sole importer of petrol. Nobody spoke of any intermediary companies through which this product is imported.

As with many things connected to the present government in Abuja, contemptible lies, subterfuge and half-truths always come before full disclosure.

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Even then, that is never directly acknowledged but left to float around for the people to reach their own conclusions without any one taking responsibility. 

The NNPC, through its Group Managing Director, Mele Kyari, pretended to be taking responsibility when he acknowledged that their agents here in Nigeria accepted at face value the oil product that was imported and did not check it for the level of methanol it carried. But the GMD in the same breath cleverly deflected attention from himself and the company he heads by attributing importation of the fuel to companies other than the NNPC. The question to ask, which is the elephant in the house, is if it’s part of best practice in the oil industry for standard necessary checks for quality to be overlooked in transactions of this nature. Or is it? Where this has happened as is the case now, is there nobody entrusted with that responsibility? Or is Mr. Kyari telling us that there are no officers of the NNPC whose duty it is to check and ensure that imported products meet required standards before they are allowed to be consumed by the public?
Why are these individuals suddenly missing in action, why is nobody mentioning their names; why are heads not “rolling” as our public officials are wont to say? Clearly some people have failed in their duty and they are neither prepared to take responsibility for it nor are those in authority prepared to bring them to book. We continue to act as if all is well. It makes sense to think the failure of relevant authorities to impose appropriate sanctions on those culpable for the contrived energy crisis of the last four weeks is to ensure that no new cans of worms are prised open in a manner that will show the direct involvement of top government and NNPC officials in the crisis that had brought about this national shame and disgrace rolled into one. 

There is no doubt that what this methanol-contaminated fuel has shown is the rotten underbelly of the poor regulation and by extension the Muhammadu Buhari government that proclaims it is about integrity while top officials of the government are continually snared in unspeakable corruption. There is so much going on inside this government that will not bear scrutiny but which the government has smugly chosen to cover in the cloak of integrity bought in the currency of President Buhari’s reputation. The level of the President’s apparent unawareness of what goes on inside his government is downright astounding and should be embarrassing for believers in Buhari’s style of governance and his supposed integrity.

Yet the President continues to bask in the glory of his integrity and even as he seems more out of touch with his surroundings and the pain that Nigerians are daily passing through. Or what could his recent comments about him looking forward to being a former president mean? How pertinent are these as a talking point at this moment of national crisis that bears all the imprint of failure in high places? What has the President’s readiness to leave
power not a day later than the Constitution stipulates got to do with the soaring inflation in the land? What impact does that have on market price index?  His was a government that promised (certainly out of a fear of both the known and the unknown) to retain fuel subsidy that it denied for years did not exist- this government promised to keep oil subsidy beyond the life of the administrationin 2023 having promised earlier to end it in February 2022. But just at the beginning of February when Nigerians thought they could heave a sigh of relief, that was when their agents chose to punish Nigerians with contaminated fuel that has induced unprecedented scarcity amid abundance and jerked up the pump price of fuel well above 300% of what it sold for at the end of January. What scam or corruption can be worse than that- to take back with the left hand three times more than it gave with the right hand? Yet all President Buhari could think of at this time is to self-righteously remind Nigerians, as if that’s a cause for celebration, that he would not stay beyond 2023 in office. 

Are we supposed to be grateful to him for this? Is this for the President or his supporters evidence of integrity- that he will remain in office within the limits permitted by the Constitution? What else could he have done? Does he have an option in the matter as things stand? Of what relevance is such communication to the concerns of Nigerians now? One should think that the president would be thankful that in spite of all Nigerians are enduring under his government the country is still standing as one. He should be grateful to Nigerians that they are  a complacent lot, often driven to an impossible level of apparent self-satisfaction if not perverted mirth amid terrible pain. We are a people who would always make allowance for incompetent leaders for whom the bar of leadership is so low as to be ungradable- hence our happiest people on earth
tag. 

President Buhari and members of his government at all levels ought to thank what forces they believe in that they have remained this far in office without any major incident beyond #EndSARS. Otherwise, there is no justification for the persistent chest-thumping that would make the president claim that people would be walking from Lagos to Ibadan but for him! Or the exaggerated sense of exertion, forbearance or integrity that has led to him proclaiming and swearing that he would leave office in 2023. That’s what the Constitution says and it is in his own interest to leave at that date. Except he wants to share the fate of those sit-tight fools who thought Nigeria couldn’t exist without them and so stayed beyond their welcome only to reap the shame of their foolery. From yakub Gowon to Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, it was the same story. 

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