Nigeria’s Shame In Oil Refining, But People Love To Fear, Loathe Groundbreakers With Passion: The Case Of Dangote And Chukwuma
The Oasis Reporters
July 23, 2024
According to Nefertiti @firstladyship, Dangote is a Monopolist. But he doesn’t deserve the horrible treatment he is currently getting.
She has a big question why Alhaji Aliko Dangote would, out of severe exasperation, offer the NNPCL to buy him out.
Why ?
Aliko Dangote offering to sell his 650,000 bpd Dangote refinery to the NNPCL, is all the proof you need. Alas, Nigeria happened to Alhaji!
But when did the NNPC manage anything successfully? No one spent almost a decade building a refinery with the intention to sell it.
NNPCL that is legendary for its weak accountability.
For 52 years in the life of the nation, despite the fact that when it comes to refining crude oil which Nigeria has in superabundance, the country has humiliated itself most dismally. It hasn’t given breath to hope. 52 years!
And here’s a man who’s trying to tame our shame and turn it to glory. Whatever it costs, such a person needs the support of all. Let’s write a good thing for once about us.
Recall what Innoson Vehicles founder passed through in the hands of the government under Chief Olusegun Obasanjo.
Olusegun Obasanjo is best remembered as a patriot who wanted to make Nigeria self-sufficient in the automotive industry. So he established Volkswagen Industries in Lagos, somewhere on the way to Badagry. There was Peugeot Automobile industry in Kaduna, Steyr motors in Bauchi, Fiat Motors industries in Kano and Leyland Trucks in Ibadan etc. While he was the nation’s Head of State between 1976-1979, the companies did well.
Obasanjo left office and they all collapsed. Showing an utter and complete lack of resiliency.
So Innocent Chukwuma came in from the cold, clutching prototype designs for different automobiles.
“I’ll manufacture cars, buses and trucks to put Nigeria on the map”.
For all his pains, his molds were confiscated and left for the rain to beat them at the wharf. The man cried. Obasanjo believed that if he could set up that many automotive industries only for them to fail, in less than twenty years, no Nigerian could succeed in that business.
Innocent Chukwuma bided his time. Obasanjo would leave office one day. Well, he left. Umaru Musa Yar’adua came in but had health challenges and could not attend to the issue.
Until Jonathan came and Peter Obi came in with the lubricant that took Chief Innocent Chukwuma through the door of favour at Aso Rock. Today, Innoson Auto is giving Nigeria pride. Fully in production.. His automobiles are sold within Nigeria and in many countries of Africa.
Now talking about Aliko Dangote, many people regard him as “a crony capitalist whose practices stunt the economy instead of growing it, according to @Proghet. Even though the man disagrees with that tag. True or not, that’s in the eyes of the one who says so anyway.
However, the ongoing extrajudicial destruction of the Dangote business organisation by the Tinubu regime is not at all something to celebrate.
Aliko Dangote may need state capture and government-enforced monopoly to make money, but he has – at least theoretically – created billions of dollars in economic value.
Nigerians are poor, and both of them have not done much to help the people break out of poverty, but the latter at least needs us to be alive to be able to work for him and buy his output.
Also, the example of Japanese and Korean industrialisation shows that a serious government finds ways to integrate entities like Dangote into its national growth plan instead of making enemies out of them and trying to destroy them”, wrote Proghet on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Whatever it is worth, obviously there’s something in the system that does not want Nigeria to work.
NNPCL talks at Dangote refinery in such a manner?
They best know why for 52 years they kept Nigeria in the doldrums while they remained like overfed cows. They could not succeed. Oil companies elsewhere like Aramco of Saudi Arabia, Petrobas of Brazil etc, return profit, while NNPCL makes losses.
Failure smells. But the people are on the side of Dangote this time around.
This is a saga that needs to be unraveled for we need Nigeria to exhale and be full of warmth.
Greg Abolo
gregabolo@gmail.com
