An Oil Producing Country Without Fuel

 By Sunny Awhefeada

The ongoing energy crisis manifesting as scarci­ty of petroleum products has for the umpteenth time portrayed Nigeria for what it truly is, a failed nation. Our failure is monumental and tragically so. A friend drew the analogy between Nigeria and a household that grows cassava, but lacks garri and the children from that home go plate in hand starving and begging whereas their parents’ farms hold thousands of cassava stems with robust tubers ensconced in the womb of the earth.

Nigeria prides herself as a leading oil pro­ducing nation, but like the man that lives by the riverside and washes his hands with spittle, Nigeria suffers peren­nial crisis in the petroleum sector. More than anything else, petroleum has been the most intransigent source of our problem as a nation. What has been described as the Dutch disease seems to find a lasting domain in Nige­ria.

Niger Delta: Letter To The President

By Jide Oyewusi

Your Excellency, ever since the discovery of crude oil in the Niger Delta region in 1956, the fortune of Nigeria as a nation has never remained the same, especially from 1958 when Nigeria’s first oil field came on stream.

The discovery of the black gold by Shell BP, the sole concessionaire at the time has led to some level of development in the country even though a far cry from what ought to be considering the huge resources that have accrued to the nation from the oil trade.

So while many view the discovery of oil as a blessing in view of those developments achieved especially during the oil boom era of the 70s, some would rather see the discovery of crude oil as bringing nothing but doom to the nation.