Oily tales from Oiled tongues & Merry Xmass to DF and ALL men of Goodwill
ike muo
When something is OILY, it is slimy, slippery, easy to swallow, difficult to grasp and used to compound other elements. When something is OILED, it has been coated with oil and consequently, it is smooth, frictionless, lubricated, and free-flowing. I want to start this intervention with a wager. I have never betted before. ... However today, I feel ‘betty’. I am willing to offer my certificates from Nigeria's finest universities (University of Ibadan, Ahmadu Bello University and University of Lagos) to anyone who can explain to me in a KISS-model, the happenings in our oil industry, where NNPC, which is now a private limited company, regulates other private companies, makes policy statements on behalf of the government and is both a regulator and an operator. It is just like the Central Bank of Nigeria operating CBN Commercial Bank Ltd! For a long while, the key feature of our NNPC-regulated oil industry was (and is still), it’s extreme opacity. However of late, it has become as complicated as our analogue telephone wires, where one cannot differentiate the in-wires that bring in the calls from the out-wires that distribute the calls. Nigeria is the only oil-producing country in the world where the oil ministry is left hanging such that the Minister is impliedly the oga at the top!!!