Obasanjo And His 25 Billionaires

By Remi Oyeyem

The brief exchange (as reported by the News Agency of Nigeria via PUNCH newspaper on October 30, 2016) between Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Mrs. Folorunso Alakija at the 2016 Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Forum last weekend was very instructive in so many ways. It was very instructive because it underscored the kind of mentality possessed by those who have had the chance(s) to govern Nigeria. Or it underscored the misfortune of Nigerians to have been governed by the kind of leaders they have had so far.

*Obasanjo: Celebrating his 25 billionaires? 

Mrs. Alakija, according to reports, had fired the first salvo accusing the Obasanjo administration that it “illegally took an oil block” allocated to her company after her family had “invested all” to “strike oil in commercial quantity.” Mrs. Alakija said the following in addition:

‘She said, “This oil block is in 5000 feet depth of water and was extremely difficult to explore. It took 15 years from the time that we were awarded the licence in 1993 till 2008 when we first struck the first oil.

“When this event happened, 60 per cent out of our 60 per cent equity in the business, was forcefully taken from us by the government of the day without due process.

We had to fight back by going to court to seek redress and it took another 12 years for justice to be served in our favour.”

Obasanjo in his response had reportedly explained that the “action of the government then was in line with the Mining Act which regulates oil prospection and exploration.” He insisted that it was “not fair” for Mrs. Alakija to claim that she was denied what was rightfully hers. Obasanjo –Onyejekwe added “I do not know you from Adam and there is no reason I would have denied you what rightfully belonged to you. So, you struggled, and you have struck oil. God bless your heart.”

Then Obasanjo dropped the bombshell:

“My delight is to be able to create Nigerian billionaire and I always say it that my aim, when I was in government was to create 50 Nigerian billionaires.

“Unfortunately I failed. I created only 25 and Madam, you are one of them.”

There is nothing unusual about Obasanjo’s failing to create 50 Nigerian billionaires as he intended. He has always failed Nigerians in every endeavour he has been involved. But the larger question remains the inability of our leaders to follow due process in exercising power. Our rulers often act as if they are kings of the jungle and that the laws of the land do not apply to them. They exude beastly instincts permeated with ruinous vendetta in manifesting congenital need to demonstrate crude power.

To Mrs. Alakija, until she was allotted oil wells, no one has really heard about her. She was never associated with any known business endeavour. She did not descend from any rich family or was previously married to a billionaire of credible means. She became a billionaire because she was allotted oil wells. She is emblematic of the mis-governance that has always characterized our clime. She got to be allotted oil wells in a system where nothing was ever fair and without due process. She only used her connections with our power aphrodisiacs euphemized as rulers, to get the oil wells.

Mrs. Alakija is a Yoruba woman. Like the retired General Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma she got many oil wells because of her proximity to crude power in Nigeria. None of them is from Niger Delta. With the publicly available list of the owners of oil wells in Nigeria, the people of the Niger Delta have been evidently short changed. How many Niger Deltans became billionaire as a result of owning oil wells?