By Ikeogu Oke
Reading some of the public commentaries – and other forms of
reactions – on the current fuel crisis and associated issues, I was
reminded of why I opposed the controversial call to kill the Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) made last year by a prominent Nigerian politician.
The politician reportedly summed up his justification for the call with the
words: “If you don’t kill the NNPC, it will kill Nigeria.” Clearly, those words should incline all
patriotic Nigerians to see the country’s survival and theirs as dependent on
their killing NNPC at a time when,
due to various factors, its popularity was arguably at its nadir.
Prominent among those factors were allegations of massive corruption and
chronic mismanagement. And since we would naturally like to survive together
with our country and be rid of things that pose a fatal threat to our joint
existence (as the call implies about NNPC), I believe the politician in
question expected us to accept the kill-or-be-killed scenario he created and
act like people who understand that self-preservation is the first law of
nature. An instance of the instigation or blackmail to kill for supposed
self-preservation couldn’t have been more subtle or effective to the discerning
mind.
Now, one of such public
commentaries is Moses E. Ochonu’s “Dr. Kachikwu’s Blunders” – published
recently in Sahara Reporters and Premium Times – which more or less sums up the
predicament of the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources in managing the current
fuel scarcity in the country thus: “Whatever he is doing is not working… The
man thrives on deception and propaganda…. He deserves whatever opprobrium is
heaped on him.” Let me say en passant that this sort of criticism is too harsh
and demoralising. The function of the responsible social critic is to build
hope while identifying problems, and not to demoralise. Ochonu’s criticism
demoralises by its unjustified total condemnation of its target and his
efforts, and by spreading despair.
And by other forms of
reactions, I refer to such call made by the leaders of the Academic Staff Union
of Universities (ASUU) on the Network News of the Africa Independent Television
(AIT) on April 11, 2016, asking for the minister’s resignation.
