These are definitely not the best of times for Minister of State for Petroleum, Ibe Kachikwu, who stuck out his neck to tell the whole world that by Thursday (three days ago) the ‘magic’ he had not been able to perform for over six weeks would come to pass! That was the deadline he had given for the disappearance of the fuel queues that had dotted all over the nation, the largest producer of ‘black gold’ on the continent of Africa.
Even landlocked Niger and Chad, which do not produce a drop of the vital product necessary to drive modern nations, have not witnessed the kind of hardship Nigerians have endured for close to two months now. Not since the times of the ‘goggled one’ the late General Sani Abacha have we witnessed such stress to get the all important premium motor spirit (PMS), more popularly known as petrol.
The situation has been made worse by the insensitive policies of those in power who in their wisdom decreed that petrol stations should not sell the product to anyone with a keg – knowing full well that the same powers that be have kept the nation in almost perpetual darkness.
This decree forced the already suffering masses to lug generators of various sizes to the stations to get the product they need to generate their own power to run their businesses and houses. At one instance I watched amazed as a pickup truck drove up with a massive petrol generator, which needed four hefty men to bring down before they staggered with the machine to the pump to fill its tank! I’m sure this was the scene played out across various filling stations across the land.
I personally left my house last Tuesday morning at 4.30am to try to get the product at a filling station in Alausa, Lagos only to arrive the station with a friend to already meet the place jamb-packed. It was clear that most of the motorists already at the station had slept in their cars over night in order to ensure that they are in prime position to get fuel. Of course we had to leave because it was very clear that we would have spent virtually the whole day there, which was the case when we did get last Sunday having got to the petrol station at 5.30am.
On that day we did not leave till after 11 – but at least we were able to fill our tanks. So it was clear to most motorists that the Thursday deadline given by Kachikwu would turn out to be another ruse given by a public officer, who knows that at the end of the day his words really do not count for much – after all he will not be the first or even the last to make promises that are not kept.
Even his party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), which promised Nigerians so much in the run up to last year’s general elections is already recounting on some of the promises made. For many it’s like the APC just made those promises to get the necessary votes to upstage the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that had been in power since the inception of the Third Republic in 1999.
Sadly that is the kind of democracy we practice in Nigeria were we promise things that we have no plans of fulfilling. But can we actually blame the politicians because after all these years we should have come to realise that politicians will always be politicians not matter the party they belong to.
The onus should be on we the people, who have the voting power, to ensure that we make them keep their promises.While the nation is still grappling with fuel scarcity and no public power supply government has gone ahead to tell the world that by the end of the year the nation will be generating 10,000MW of electricity! Tell that to the marines – please! Despite the current hike in electricity tariff the nation is wallowing in darkness – which magic will government be able to do in the eight months left to take our power generation from barely about 4,500MW to 10, 000MW?
Of course I won’t be surprised that when that date comes and passes with the nation still in groping in darkness, government will come up with the same old excuses of vandalism of the gas pipelines and inability for Nigerians to enjoy the said megawatts because the distribution is below par, which of course begs the question – why is government not tackling both problems (generation and distribution) simultaneously?
So while Kachikwu has already thrown up reasons why his Thursday deadline failed, at least if what the video he posted on his Facebook page is to be believed (where he blamed unavailability of foreign exchange, lack of capacity, activities of pipeline vandals as well as the reduction in subsidy payment), at the end of the day what Nigerians like citizens of other countries want is for them to be able to feel the presence of their government no matter the party in power.
By the way, through all these trying times of the past weeks, why have we not heard a word from the Petroleum Minister, President Muhammadu Buhari?
NEW TELEGRAPH
END
Be the first to comment