Anytime you find yourself interrupting some one by saying things like “ I know just how you feel” or “ me too; something similar happened to me!” you are being self absorbed. The wisest people in the world are attentive when you talk to them, they look at you, and they are not playing a movie in their minds about similar situations, or even imagining themselves in the exact same situation.

I should concede upfront that I have personally not read this bill and cannot talk with facility or insight about its content and form, and thus particularly, its implication in the evolution of the oil industry in Nigeria.

It is not yet up to a year since I began to feel differently. I believe I have written about that change here. It is not anything as earth-shaking as St. Paul’s conversion. It was simply a growing awareness of an inward uplifting – that is the only way I can describe it; an internal effervescence that fills you with a gripping desire to ascend to a plane of higher thoughts and nobler deeds.

Democracy? That’s a long way off. What we have on ground is a quarter kilometre to one-party dictatorship. We say we are a Federal Republic of Nigeria, but there is nothing federal about the system which has mutated within half a century from a federation to a military-style unitary dictatorship.

WITHOUT having the opportunity of reading the full details of the proposed Bill, my comments would be limited to the address of the Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dr. Rilwanu Lukman – an experienced oil technocrat. Having served in oil affairs in different administrations, one might be tempted to believe that the oil ‘oracle’ knows what he is talking about on the proposed Bill, which has now become very controversial. From the Minister’s masterly address, inference could be easily drawn on the mindset of the Federal Government.