I am taking a break from political commentary to everyday language usage this week. A few weeks ago, a British journalist who writes about oil and gas wrote to thank me for past articles I wrote that explained why Nigerians call “petrol” “Premium Motor Spirit.”

“While I have always assumed PMS meant petrol, I never knew exactly why this term was so widespread in Nigeria!” he wrote. This email inspired me to republish parts of what I wrote about this.

There is a widespread misconception in Nigerian journalistic circles that “premium motor spirit” is the proper name for petrol, and this misconception appears to be percolating into wider popular usage.

Almost without exception, Nigerian newspapers refer to petrol as “premium motor spirit” or PMS. In fact, “petrol” is typically represented as the alias of “premium motor spirit.” In other words, Nigerian newspapers mislead their readers into thinking that everyone in the English-speaking world recognizes “premium motor spirit” as the real name for “petrol.”

 Take, for instance, this 2017 lead from one of Nigeria’s best-edited online newspapers: “Premium Motor Spirit, otherwise known as petrol, is selling at N500 per litre in the black market in Kaduna State as government began enforcement of ban on sale of petroleum products in jerry cans.”

Almost all Nigerian newspapers feel the need to refer to petrol as “premium motor spirit” and to signal that the rest of us linguistically unwashed plebeians call it “petrol.” It never ceases to provoke loud hearty laughter in me each time I read it. It’s my go-to linguistic comic relief.

 Well, only Nigerian newspapers, and the people who are influenced by them, call petrol “premium motor spirit.” It’s an entirely meaningless phrase to native English speakers in America, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It also makes no sense to English speakers in India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other Commonwealth countries where English is spoken as a second language.

 In 2012, I asked several of my American friends, colleagues, and students what the phrase “premium motor spirit” evoked in them. They all said they had never encountered the phrase and had no clue what it meant.

I searched the 520-million-word Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) to see if any American English speaker has ever used the term. I got no matching record. I also searched the 400-million-word Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) to find out if any American ever used the expression between 1810 and 2009.  Again, no luck.

I thought, perhaps, the phrase would be familiar to British English speakers, so I searched the British National Corpus to see if there is any record of its use in British English. I had no luck, either.

Finally, I searched the 1.9-billion-word Corpus of Global Web-Based English, which indexes English usage in 20 different English-speaking countries. I had some luck this time around. I got 53 matches. But of the 53 matches for “premium motor spirit” that turned up in the database, 49 came from Nigerian English users, 3 from Ghanaian English users, and 1 from a Kenyan newspaper.

When I followed the link to the Ghanaian sites that used “premium motor spirit,” I found that the writers were Nigerians who were based in Ghana. The fact that Kenya is the only other country where “premium motor spirit” was used, even if only once, as an alternative name for “petrol” alerted me to the fact that the word probably has British English roots.

Origins of “Motor Spirit”

My hunch was right. Although the term enjoys no currency in contemporary British English (as evidenced from its complete absence from the British National Corpus), it actually started life in Britain some 200 years ago.

Carless, Capel & Leonard (now renamed Petrochem Carless Ltd), one of Britain’s first oil companies, was the first to use the term “petrol” in English, in 1870, to refer to refined petroleum products, which weren’t used to power cars at the time.

By the 1930s when petrol became the fuel used in internal combustion engines, Carless, Capel & Leonard applied to trademark “petrol” so that the company’s competitors (who frequently used the term “motor spirit” to refer to their product) won’t be able to call their product “petrol.”

But the application was denied because the use of “petrol” to refer to refined petroleum products, derived from the French petrole (ultimately from Medieval Latin petroleum, which literally means “rock oil,” from the Latin petra, which means rock or stone, and oleum, which means oil) had become widespread by the 1930s in Britain.

With the denial of Carless, Capel & Leonard’s application to trademark “petrol,” other British companies that had referred to their product as “motor spirit” freely adopted “petrol” as the name of choice for their product, and “motor spirit” fell into disuse.

“Premium” wasn’t an invariable lexical component of the name. The “premium” in the name refers to the grade of the product. There are three major grades of petrol in the UK: “ordinary unleaded,” “premium or super unleaded,” and “leaded four star.”

 In the US, petrol, which is called gasoline (or gas for short), has the following grades: “Regular,” “Mid-grade or Plus,” and “Premium.”

 Saudi Arabia has “premium” and “super premium” grades of petrol. Many other countries have several names for different grades of petrol.

So “premium” is one of at least three adjectives that could modify “motor spirit” when “motor spirit” enjoyed currency in Britain. There could conceivably have existed “ordinary unleaded motor spirit” or “leaded four star motor spirit”—or whatever names existed at the time for grades of motor spirit in Britain.

In other words, calling petrol “premium motor spirit” is the same thing as calling petrol “premium petrol” now, even though there are other grades of the product.

Interestingly, Nigeria is one of only a few countries in the world where petrol is ungraded. Maybe that is why our journalists assume that every petrol is of a premium grade and therefore call petrol “premium motor spirit” (never mind that “motor spirit” is obsolete).

Premium Motor Spirit a Scientific Name?

A few people have asked me if “premium motor spirit” is perhaps the scientific name for petrol since Nigerian oil industry experts, including academic researchers in petroleum studies, liberally use it.  No, it’s not. There isn’t one specific scientific name for petrol.

As I said earlier, “motor spirit” is the archaic British English name for petrol, and “premium” indicates the grade of the “motor spirit.” Today, most British speakers have no idea what “motor spirit” means and would be even more puzzled by the permanent modification of the term with “premium.”

It’s mystifying that Nigerian journalists—and Nigerian academics— are about the only people who are still wedded to a phrase that died in Britain in the 1930s.

Note that different countries have different names for petrol. Most people know that Americans and Canadians call it gasoline. Germans and people who are influenced by German linguistic traditions call it “benzin,” which is derived from “benzene,” a constituent part of petrol. The French from whom the British borrowed “petrol,” now call it “essence.” Spanish-speaking people call it “gasolina.”

I also find it intriguing that Nigerians use the American English “kerosene” instead of the British English “paraffin” as the term of choice for lamp oil.

Maybe Nigeria should formally adopt “motor spirit” as its national name for petrol. After all, petrol is the “spirit” that moves “motors,” which is the alternative name for vehicles in British and Nigerian English.

Those who live in denial according to Yoruba aphorism often focus on treatment of rashes while ignoring the more deadly and life- threatening leprosy affliction. Unfortunately, as a nation, it is in our character to expend energy in addressing symptoms instead of facing our demons. 

For instance, whereas our visionary forbears bequeathed on to us a federal system, celebrated by over two-third of the nations of the world for its ability to guarantee ‘unity in diversity’ in a multi-ethnic society, we traded it for a unitary state.

But when the aggrieved deprived and marginalized individuals and groups fought back against the state that took over the control of their lives, their resources, the right to impact their values and culture in the education of their children, the roads they pass through and even the water they drink, instead of addressing the fundamental problem which requires simple political solution, we decided to focus on symptoms which find expression in crisis of legitimacy, massive corruption, economic sabotage, terrorism and banditry, kidnapping for ransom, weaponisaton of religion etc. by those who have lost faith in the state’s capacity to protect them.

Unfortunately, the state has failed the north-western states with a total population of 24,244,722 (1991 Census) in their ongoing tribal war. But just as the northern parasitic elite misadvised Muhammadu Buhari to focus on the symptoms in 2016, they last week once again misled President Bola Tinubu to believe that “the deployment of necessary military assets and manpower would ensure that these criminal elements were flushed out and the peace restored back to our communities.”

Since we passed through this same path not too many seasons ago, those who are  today hailing the relocation of military chiefs along with the Minister of State for Defence, Bello Matawalle, who has promised  to be “on the ground in the Northwest with the CDS and other military chiefs, leading our brave men and women in uniform… to liberate the people of Sokoto, Katsina, Zamfara and Kebbi states and the entire Northwest region” either have short memories or are suffering from selective amnesia.

What is going on in the northwest is a tribal war. And solution is political bargaining and compromise. And if there are still misgivings as to the nature of social dislocation that led to tribal war between the ruling Fulani hegemonic class and conquered Hausa tribe that came to the open shortly after inauguration of Buhari as president in 2015,  the July 25, 2022 BBC  airing of “Bandit warlords of Zamfara”  erased such doubts. The broadcast also traced the sources of the social dislocation in the affected states to ethnic rivalry over control of political and economic fortunes of their different communities.

The major protagonists did not weigh words as to the causes of their intense hatred for each other. One attributed source of their anguish, to ‘the closing down of traditional grazing routes and systematic exclusion of Fulani from government businesses. They therefore have no regret in the mindless killings of their arch enemies, the subsistence farmers. And for their grief, the Hausa farming community vigilantes of Kurfa Dunya swore: “If allowed, we will kill every Fulani man, even in the town, because they killed our mothers, our fathers, our children, and dumped their bodies here”.

In fact, Ibrahim Dosara, one time Zamfara State Commissioner of Information did not only identify the genesis of the rivalry between the two tribes that had co-existed for centuries, but proffered possible solution. According to him, the “genesis of rural banditry in Zamfara as elsewhere in the northwest started with a conflict between the Fulani and Hausa communities in the state leading to 2,619 deaths, 1,190 abducted and 14,378 livestock rustled with 100,000 people  displaced from their ancestral homes between 2011 and 2019.”  And for him, the cheapest and most cost-effective way to reduce hostility was institutionalisation of community policing especially since “Zamfara lacks enough security forces from the federal government to secure the lives and properties of the people in the state”.

But Buhari’s government which conceitedly arrogated to itself the power to know what the people wanted without asking them continued to live in denial. In fact, it gave  the impression that  aggressors that confiscated villages sending victims to IDP camps, were ghosts  until ex governors Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano, Aminu Masari of Katsina and Nasir El Rufai of Kaduna confirmed the terrorists were indeed Fulani herdsmen mostly from outside the country.  Sheik Gumi went a step further by going into the bandits’ den to obtain their demands which include amnesty and re-integration into our security services and larger society.

And as if to confirm that the Fulani believe in their just cause, Aliyu Marafa the Emir of Yantoro (dethroned and later reinstated) turbaned Ado Aileru, a notorious Fulani gang leader who was on the run after leading a massacre in the village of Kadisau in June 2020 and for terrorizing residents and motorists elsewhere in the northwest, as the Sarkin Fulanin.

Community policing as suggested by Ibrahim Dosara would have produced a balance of terror especially with recruits drawn from the warring Fulani and indigenous Hausa people compelled to jointly confront their demons. But President Buhari and his defence minister, Bashir Salihi Magashi, opposed state and community policing not controlled from Abuja.

For them to “rout-out, arrest and prosecute armed bandits, vicious kidnappers for ransom and cattle rustling gangs operating in Zamfara State”, what Zamfara needed were a full battalion of special forces; “Operation Maximum Safety with 510 police personnel and 40 patrol vehicles”, “Joint Intervention Team of about 1000 police personnel, counter terrorism unit (CTU), federal special anti-robbery squad (FSARS), anti-bomb (EOD) squad, and conventional policemen” and Air Force’s indiscriminate bombing from the air.

Ten years down the line, little has changed except that hostility has spread across the whole of the north-western states.

President Tinubu who admitted preparing hard for this job in the run up to the election rightly identified community and state policing as one of the ways to address insecurity among local communities. One is therefore not sure of the new information at his disposal compelling him to align with the position of self-serving winners-take-all northern leaders who have always opposed compromise and political bargaining in resolving crisis of nation building.

Tribal war is a factor of most multi-ethnic societies where dominant ethnic group try to lord it over smaller ethnic nationalities.  Europe for centuries fought tribal wars over the rights of groups to protect their values and culture. There was temporary cessation of hostilities after the 1648 Westphalia Agreement. It was not until after the two so called world wars which were in fact tribal wars, that Europe swore “never again”, with institutionalisation of federal system that protects groups and individuals from the tyranny of the state.

Since distributive justice or concern for fair allocation of resources among members of the community is at the core of the tribal war between warring Hausa and their Fulani compatriots, what is required is compromised bargaining  especially as we have discovered that any other option will only prolong their nightmare.

President Tinubu who won last year election by securing northern elite consensus is uniquely positioned to serve as an independent arbiter. He cannot afford to miss this historic opportunity to right the wrongs of the past especially where the northern establishment has roundly rejected policies that guarantees a measure of egalitarianism in the north.

For Tinubu therefore, addressing symptoms cannot be an option. With tribal war amidst ravaging poverty and about 10m of out of school children in the northwest, with Niger Delta political leaders unable to end crude oil theft in their backyard and with political elite elsewhere in the country busy importing the labour of other societies in the name of commerce, his much cherished economic crusade will be doomed.

THE addresses by world leaders speaking for eight  billion human begins, began flowing at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on Tuesday, September 10, 2024. The focus is on peace; how to save humanity from itself.

That same day, a debate raged in the host country between its two leading presidential candidates, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Inevitably, they had to address the issue of peace, especially in the Palestine which houses symbolic cities of peace like Bethlehem and Jerusalem. It is a Holy Land where the blood of the innocent waters its fields, mountains and valleys.

Harris advocated a ceasefire-for-hostage deal. She condemned the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on southern Israel but added that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed” by Israel.

To all Harris talked about peace in the Palestine, Trump, the former Twitter-in-Chief, chirruped: “She hates Israel!” “She hates Israel!” “She hates Israel!” Then, he switched to: “She also hates the Arab population!”

Trump’s singsong about Harris hating Israel and the Palestinians while not clearly stating his own position, is not the product of a confused mind. Rather, it portrays America’s duplicitous position; a peace maker who favours one side. Expecting the US to broker peace in the Palestine, is like Waiting for Godot.

The League of Nations was moulded from the furnace of the First World War with a primary purpose to end wars and create peace. That failed and, a bloodier World War Two erupted. The creation of the UN 79 years ago was again, to ensure universal peace.

However, some of the world leaders now taking their turn to address the UN General Assembly on peace, are the very practitioners of bloody strife in the world.

Actually, calling for peace can be hazardous and can come at high cost. When Canadian legislator, Sarah Jama, advocated a ceasefire in the Israeli war in Gaza, she was accused of anti-Semitism and expelled from her Ontario New Democratic Party caucus.

United Kingdom Member of Parliament, Paul Bristow was sacked as aide to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology for calling for a ceasefire in the Palestine.

Andy McDonald, Labour MP for Middlesbrough was suspended from the party when he said at a demonstration: “We will not rest until we have justice. Until all people, Israelis and Palestinians , between the river and the sea, can live in peace.”

Jeremy Corbyn, British Labour Party leader for five years from 2015, was expelled for advocating a ceasefire in Gaza. The party termed his campaigns as anti-Semitism. He had to stand as an independent candidate to retain his Islington North seat. He was punished for desiring a British government that would on the world stage “search for peace, not war”.

Sometimes, the cost for even suggesting peace, is capital punishment. Denys Kireyev, a 45-year-old Ukrainian banker on February 23, 2024 obtained information that Russia was going to attack Kiev the next day and that the Antonov Airport would be the centre of the attacks. His information was spot on and it enabled his country prepare for the attack.

Five days later, he was part of the Ukrainian Negotiating Team that met with Russia in Gomel, Belarus. There, he toed a line for a ceasefire. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government led by President Volodymyr  Zelensky was not interested in peace; it believed that Russia has to be militarily defeated.

A week later, Kireyev was invited by the Security Service of Ukraine, SBU, accused of being treasonable at the peace talks and was summarily executed with a shot in the head.

The government lied that Kireyev, who had honoured an invitation, was killed while trying to avoid detention. An uncoordinated government then made a second announcement that he had died while on a “special mission”. Finally Ukraine’s Defense Ministry announced that Kireyev had died “defending Ukraine and …Heroes don’t die!” The point had been made: talk peace and die.

This Tuesday, the President of the UN General Assembly, Mr. Dennis Francis reported to the human race that while in the last one year, he visited 31 countries, “circumstances frustrated my desire to meet with Israelis and Palestinians on the ground”.

That admission that he could not visit the epicentre of on-going conflicts in the world is like an admission that the UN is failing in its primary purpose of ensuring world peace.

The Trinidadian diplomat noted with regret: “Peace holds the foremost position, not just as a guiding principle but as the very raison d’être, the alpha and omega, if you will, of the United Nations …This organization was forged in the fires of two cataclysmic wars, with the solemn vow of sparing future generations from the scourge of war.”

There are no pretences that the major world leaders in Europe and North America do not want peace as evidenced by their insistence that even basic steps towards peace talks will not be taken in the bloody Russo-Ukrainian War.

So, the fires of war are being deliberately stoked in many parts of the world. They include the European-North American War burning in Ukraine, the Middle East conflicts that have already sucked in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. There are the virtually forgotten wars in Syria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and, the low intensity combats in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Nigeria and Myanmar. The armed conflicts in Somalia have been on since 1981 with two short periods of lull in the fighting.

Direct armed conflicts are not the only danger to world peace. There are issues like unilateral actions taken against countries on the basis that powerful nations do not like their politics.

Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has decided to mediate in one of them. In a September 3, 2024 letter to US President Joe Biden, he wrote: “It has been brought to my attention that Cuba is currently listed by the United States as one of the countries supporting or sponsoring terrorism globally. As my interaction and relationship with the government and people of Cuba is concerned, especially during and after the time of Fidel Castro, I want to appeal with you, President Biden, to reconsider Cuba’s inclusion on the list of countries supporting terrorism globally. I know and appreciate what contributions Cuba made to (the) final liquidation of colonialism and Apartheid in Africa.”

Cuba made the US “terrorist” list for actions like fighting the Apartheid military in Africa and, supporting liberation fighters like Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ruth First, Joe Slovo and Oliver Thambo. These were people the US and UK classified as “terrorists”.

Today, peace is broken universally, the challenges are picking up its pieces and how the UN can piece them together again.

In the face of the challenges in the oil sector, particularly the current tightness in the supply of petrol, it has become fashionable to blame the national oil company, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Ltd (NNPC Ltd), for everything. Last week, it was Prof. Pat Utomi who railed and fumed at the NNPC Ltd calling it one of the most opaque and unreliable companies in the world. Before then, The Punch had published an editorial in which it described the NNPC Ltd as a danger to Nigeria. The latest of these vitriolic attacks is by Dr. Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), and former Commissioner of Transport and Environment, Lagos State, who contended in his column in The Sun that NNPC Ltd is the black hole of Nigeria.

Considering all that is going on in the petroleum sector, it would appear justifiable to call out the NNPC Ltd as some people have been doing in recent times. But most of the diatribes have been based on sentiments that are not rooted in facts. Railing at the NNPC Ltd without a thorough understanding of the issues that threw up the current challenges in the oil sector, as most of the commentators have been doing, will yield no good for the country. At this critical intersection, the task for all well-meaning Nigerians should be how to find lasting solutions to the mischiefs in the oil sector and not to look for scapegoats, as Dr. Banire has done.

According to Banire, Nigeria has been experiencing fuel scarcity since 1973 on the back of fuel subsidy and the NNPC Ltd is responsible for it. The assertion that the NNPC is responsible for this state of affairs is moot. The policy of fuel subsidy is not the preserve of the NNPC. Various administrations over the years have thought it wise to subsidize the cost of petroleum products for citizens. They came up with different methods of doing that. The role of NNPC Ltd has been to implement the policy as decided by government. At a point when the various administrations felt that the fuel subsidy policy had become a burden that should be done away with, they made it known. NNPC Ltd, as the national oil company, implemented it. This was the case in 2012 when the nation went up in protest against the decision of government to remove fuel subsidy. The same scenario repeated itself in 2019 when the then administration came up with the policy to remove fuel subsidy. NNPC Ltd is neither responsible for the policy of fuel subsidy or its removal.

It is very unfortunate that Dr Banire would descend to the level of castigating the NNPC Ltd for the fuel subsidy debacle that has plagued Nigeria and on the basis of that label the Company that has over the years patriotically borne the brunt of the fuel subsidy policy as a black hole. His analysis fails to take into consideration the huge challenges of products smuggling, pipeline vandalism, and crude oil theft that the company contends with daily, and in spite of which it manages to keep the nation going with crude oil production and fuel supply.

Barely three months after the Federal Government announced the removal of fuel subsidy, it became difficult for both major and independent petroleum products marketers to import petrol because of the foreign exchange policy. They could not source forex to continue to bring in petrol. Since then, NNPC Ltd has been importing the product and selling at almost half price in keeping with the provisions of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) which designates it as the fuel supplier of last resort. Yes, there have been supply hiccups here and there because of the financial constraints imposed by the transaction. Just imagine the hardship the nation would have suffered if NNPC Ltd was not there to play the role of supplier of last resort! NNPC Ltd is the reason Nigerians continue to enjoy lower pump price for petrol than they would ordinarily pay for the product. How then does such a company become a black hole?

For Banire, NNPC Ltd is responsible for everything that is wrong in the oil sector. He even blames smuggling and the unauthorized sale of petroleum products to street urchins who in turn trade it in the black market in jerrycans on the NNPC Ltd. But does he have evidence that the unpatriotic marketers who divert petroleum products meant for local consumption to neighbouring countries are staff members or representatives of the NNPC Ltd? Does he have any shred of evidence that the boys who sell fuel in the black market in jerrycans source their products from NNPC Retail Ltd.’s stations? The least one would expect from a lawyer of Banire’s standing is a fact-based and not speculative commentary.

The NNPC Ltd has turned a corner since 2018 when it began to prepare for the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act, which was eventually passed into law in 2021. Apart from deepening its commitment to accountability and transparency by regularly publishing its audited annual financial statements, it has become a profitable company with undisputable growth trajectory. It recorded an unprecedented N3.29 trillion profit in its recently released 2023 audited financial report. But this fact is conveniently lost on Dr. Banire who insists that he has not seen any difference between NNPC as corporation and the commercially focused NNPC Ltd that was incorporated in 2021. Fortunately, it does not take Banire to see or believe that NNPC Ltd, as presently constituted, has broken away from its debilitating past for it to be true. He is at home with the legal maxim: “Res Ipsa Loquitur”, meaning the facts speak for themselves.

While one cannot dissuade people like Dr. Banire from criticizing the NNPC Ltd, they must refrain from standing facts on their heads all because they want to be populist or be in the good books of the public. Besides, the Banires of this world should also not be intentionally mischievous in their assertion that the NNPC Limited is exercising an overbearing influence on the regulators. One expects that given the level of their educational accomplishments, they should have the capacity to research very well into the subject matters of their editorial interventions so that they do not argue, assert and progress in error(s). In the corollary, it is either Banire is mischievous or ignorant about the assertion he made in his write-up that the NNPC influences the the Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission (NUPRC) and the Nigerian Midstream Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Agency (NMDPRA) who are the two independent regulators. If he lacks a clear knowledge of the workings of the sector, he should be humble enough to seek clarifications so he could be well informed. NNPC Limited is an operator-with a number of refineries under its purview. The Port Harcourt refinery will soon take off. As a matter of fact, the refineries under the NNPC are operators and are therefore subject to the regulatory framework and regulations set out by the NMDPRA. The operator(s) cannot, therefore, exercise overbearing influence on the regulators. This is commonsensically impossible. Pure and simple.

Soneye is the chief corporate communications officer of the NNPC Ltd.

Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese footballer, is celebrating 1 billion followers across all his social media platforms.

In an Instagram post on Thursday, the 39-year-old Al-Nassr forward thanked his supporters for believing in him through “all the highs and the lows”.

Ronaldo also reflected on his journey from a young boy in Madeira to becoming “one of the greatest players of all time”.

“We have made history — 1 BILLION followers! This is more than just a number,” he wrote.

“From the streets of Madeira to the biggest stages in the world, I’ve always played for my family and for you, and now 1 billion of us stand together.

“You’ve been with me every step of the way. This journey is our journey, and together, we’ve shown that there are no limits to what we can achieve.

“Thank you for believing in me, for your support, and for being part of my life. The best is yet to come, and we’ll keep pushing, winning, and making history together.”

With this new feat, Ronaldo is the most-followed person on social media — including Instagram (638 million), X (113 million), Facebook (170+ million), and YouTube (60+ million).

On August 21, Ronaldo launched his YouTube channel. The footballer also set a new Guinness World Record (GWR) for the most YouTube subscribers gained in 24 hours.

The former Manchester United and Real Madrid player has won five Ballon d’Or awards, three UEFA Men’s Player of the Year Awards, and four European Golden Shoes, the most by any European player.

The Portuguese international has also scored 895 senior career goals and is the leading all-time goal-scorer in the world.

According to the latest issue of Forbes, Ronaldo is also the highest-paid athlete in the world in 2024 with an estimated total earnings of $260 million.

[TheCable]

Since 1973, Nigeria as a country has been suffering from fuel scarcity and the challenge now seems intractable and perennial. Several reasons have been adduced for the problem, ranging from the cost of importation to the constant collapse of the country’s refineries. For equally a long time also, the petroleum corporation of the country has been accused of all manner of shady deals, culminating in the shortages witnessed in the country.

It will take a whole book to catalogue the accusations bothering on sleaze associated with the operation of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation as it was, but now a limited liability company. Is it subsidy racketeering? Is it prices manipulation? Is it storage maneuvering, diversion and smuggling? The list is endless.

The appreciation of the catastrophic performance of the corporation as it was, led to the unbundling into several entities with the ultimate privatisation of the corporation. Since the registration of the company, no significant difference has been witnessed. The situation in my view appears worse with the corporation becoming the sole importer of premium spirit into the country. It is still common knowledge that with the monopoly, imposition of manipulated prices continues.

With the astronomical figures routinely given, the NNPCL continued with alleged ‘subsidy’ in terms of price differentials. At a point, it claimed to be heavily indebted to some suppliers. The semantics involved in the continuous operation of subsidy is entirely an issue for another day. Notwithstanding the various interventions, particularly the never-ending turn-around of the Port Harcourt and Kaduna refineries, prices of petroleum products, coupled with the scarcity, continue to soar. The history of the Company, formerly known as Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, has been one of woes and crises, corruption of an immeasurable depth.

No government in Nigeria has been able to tame this unruly monster that has consistently grounded the commanding height of the economy with the masses in a state of total confusion, hunger and deprivation. As remarked above, Fuel scarcity has been a major feature of our petroleum supplies to the people since 1973 and till today, whenever there seems to be any hope or end in sight, the company will come up with something eclipsing the whole country in total darkness of an impossible solution. The NNPC has consistently and historically been a black hole into which anything that goes has no hope of being recovered. It is a worse version of the gambling machine of our childhood known in Yoruba as kalokalo.

Whatever goes into a kalokalo is lost forever to the forlorn hope of little children being encouraged to stake their pocket money. Ajere, the Yoruba name for the storing receptacle of Ifa sacred palm nuts, believed to be incapable of storing water, is a lot better than kalokalo. While ajere is incapable of retaining water due to the holes perforating its wooden body but you can retrieve other items stored therein, at least water poured into ajere comes out through the holes and you can still see it.
On the other hand is the NNPCL with its incapacity to produce anything stored in it or put in its care. It was the systemic corruption that has grounded the company for decades that has made it impossible to make things work. The government of the day in 1979 following the Report that about N2.8 billion was missing from the crude oil sales for the period between 1976 to 1979, set up the Justice Ayo Irikefe Tribunal to probe the activities of the corporation. The Tribunal looked into the 20-year Production Sharing Agreement between Nigeria and Ashland Oil Company Limited, an American company, and described the whole sham contract as “an arrangement” by which Nigerians were fleeced to the enrichment of those who were involved in the arrangement.

It was under the same NNPC that the four refineries of the country were grounded and billions of dollars are being spent yearly on turn-around maintenance. The question is what are they turning around since for decades now, the refineries have failed to produce a single a single drop of refined oil? I have been aware since 1986 that Nigeria was exporting crude to Venezuela to be refined and importing the refined products in return. This was at the expense of the country and till today, Nigeria is still exporting crude to be refined abroad and importing fuel for its local consumption.

NNPC has been unable to determine the quantity of oil being produced in Nigeria and the whole nation has been a laughing stock in the comity of nations. Nigerians always look like fools who are bound to be thirsty in the abundance of water. Hardly has a year passed by without economic activities being paralysed by a scarcity of fuel and Nigerians have to spend hours in petrol stations. Despite the provisions of the law that forbid unauthorised sales of petroleum products, black markets where fuel is traded in jerry cans have become a permanent feature of our society where young men adulterate fuel and sell at exorbitant prices to the damage of consumers’ cars.

Yet, this same NNPC has been operating with all statutory amendments to its legal existence proving futile to rescue it from its systemic ailment. It has proven more determined and dangerous than Abiku of Wole Soyinka, incapable of being stemmed by propitiation. An analyst of the historical development of the Nigerian oil industry would agree that the much-expected positive change promised with the enactment of the Petroleum Industry Act, 2021 has failed. The NNPCL is incapable of being redeemed from its own self-consuming corruption. It has promised and failed so many times that the refineries would come to life and be operational with Nigerians expecting their days of woes to be over only, at every point of failure, NNPC would just shamelessly carry on proving that its word counts for nothing.

The serial promises on commencement of operations at Kaduna and Port Harcourt are yet to manifest. NNPCL has been the sole importer of petroleum products for some time now and it has been able to manipulate figures on prices as it feels like. With importation of petroleum products, it had been argued that the cost of landing was higher than the amount the products are being offered to Nigerians and hence the fact of subsidy being part of the market components. This has led to the creation of emergency billionaires who have perfected the means of fleecing the system by supplying less than the subsidy they claimed from the government.

It was based on this that it became imperative for the government to implement the Bretton Woods policy of removing oil subsidy so that the products could be sold at international market prices. Way back in 1987, we heard of the removal of subsidy which Babangida used as an excuse in the implementation of the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1989 together with the twin policy of devaluation of the currency. From then, we have been treated to festivals of subsidy removal every year.

A lot of agitations, protests and brouhaha dominated the polity for more than four decades of repeated removal of subsidy which means that subsidy would never be finally removed. The present government had no pretence about its agenda to remove oil subsidy when the President announced at his inauguration that oil subsidy was gone. Yes, many of us felt uneasy as it would compound the problems with the average Nigerian.

However, we were excited to learn that with the final removal of subsidy, we were making a lot of money in multiples of what Nigeria was making before. We felt that the President saw what we did not see then and were prepared to thank him. It did not take time, in a sudden somersault, before NNPC came with figures about subsidy being paid for the same petroleum products. Like the proverbial Phoenix or Abiku, fuel subsidy has returned again. We have NNPC to thank for all these economic gymnastics.

The recent fuel scarcity has grounded the economy again and Nigerians breathed a sigh of relief with Dangote Refinery Limited announcing its readiness to start supplying refined fuel to the market. With this development, Nigerians believed that prices of petroleum products would crash and would be more affordable. The first shock was the announcement by NNPCL that it was not ready to supply crude to Dangote Refinery Limited and hence the multi-billion dollar project was to be grounded.

This is a terrible situation. NNPC did not care that the refinery would have to be importing crude from abroad thereby making fuel more difficult for Nigerians to purchase at cheaper prices. It means that NNPC did not care if Dangote Refinery Limited goes out of production and business with thousands of jobs and opportunities that the company would provide to Nigerians being lost. All the cabals in NNPCL and their co-conspirators in the regulatory sector were concerned with is the filthy lucre that would line their massive pockets from this gargantuan project running insolvent. NNPCL, through the regulatory authority, claimed that Dangote Refinery had no capacity to refine quality fuel and that its product samples were adulterated.

The cabals in government and NNPCL do not care if the owner is bankrupt and banks have to pull him to shreds towards recovering their loans. The taciturn billionaire, Aliko Dangote, was forced to come out and challenge the hawks and jackals in government and regulators thereby staking it all and not minding if heavens would fall. It was upon this fight of the titans that the president had to intervene and thereby save the day. The president directed that NNPCL, through the offshoot regulatory body, should make crude available to Dangote Refinery Limited. We thought the fight was over and were happy. Not long thereafter, Aliko Dangote announced that his Refinery would start refining crude and in 48 hours therefrom, there would be fuel in all retail stations.

The promise made Nigerians to be excited as queues would automatically disappear. It took only a few minutes from this announcement for NNPC to announce an increase in fuel price from 658 Naira to 865 Naira. Dangote told us that the NNPCL would be the off-taker of all fuels refined by Dangote Refinery. The hike has led to prices oscillating between N850/litre to N1,400 per litre. Shockingly, NNPCL responded by declining to offtake, thereby advising the company to sell directly to independent marketers.

As if this was insufficient, when asked what the likely price of the Dangote product would be, Dangote responded that the Federal Government, through the relevant authority, would determine. I started thinking what exactly NNPCL wanted to achieve by being the sole purchaser of fuel produced by Dangote. Is it not the same Dangote they accused of producing adulterated fuel a few weeks back? It means that the allegation then was to call Dangote’s dog a bad name so as to hang it. With hues and cries in the polity, again, in response, NNPCL distanced itself from the pricing regime, stating that the owner of the product would determine the price.

In the midst of all these, Nigerians are getting confused, and the situation becomes the more you look, the less you see. The way things are emerging, it seems that Dangote Refinery is floating, not sure of what the future holds for it. My suspicion is that Dangote Refinery will most likely ultimately be unable to sell at the current prices without threat to its viability, particularly to the independent marketers. This will endanger the entire investment. It is obvious that the current operational regime of the NNPCL is not free from several compromises which the Dangote Refinery cannot afford.

This is coupled with the conspiracy of the various suppliers/contractors of the NNPCL. It is clear that NNPC has no welfare of Nigerians at heart. All it is concerned with is the interests of the cabals who have made the industry a black hole and a personal fiefdom where humongous wealth is made for them on a daily basis. It will be noticed that I kept referring to NNPCL instead of the regulatory authorities. This is deliberate to underscore the fact that nothing other than names and structures have changed. NNPCL remains what is notoriously referred to as the ‘government baby’, still with the same set of faces hitherto in the organisation before privatisation. In fact, any discerning mind knows that NNPCL still exercises an overbearing influence on the regulatory authorities.

To this extent, therefore, it is pointless to bifurcate the entities. It is in the light of the above that I conclude that in so far as there is no real change of batons in the NNPCL, nothing good can come out of it. The suffering and struggle therefore continue. It is situations like this that lead to revolutions in many countries and it is time the President looked deeper into the operations of this company. If for decades, the national refineries are incapable of being revamped so that we do not have to depend on imported fuel products, then, government capacity and will are being questioned.

The Federal Competition and Consumers Protection Commission (FCCPC) decided to host this townhall meeting in Lagos as part of a broader initiative to foster a national conversation around the sanity of the marketplace.

Before I continue, let me seize this opportunity to debunk a gross misrepresentation of the position of the Commission at the Abuja edition of the townhall series by a section of the media, particularly some of the online platforms. Contrary to the impression they created, at no time did we say we were giving traders ultimatum to crash prices across the country by fiat. That is quite ridiculous. The Commission would have required an army to enforce that. Certainly, our statutory mandate does not include price control. We are not here to fix prices or dictate to any law-abiding trader or manufacturer how to relate to the market. Rather, ours is to ensure there is no price fixing or gang-up in trade transactions.

As a Commission, we are not acting out of a brainwave. Indeed, we had carried out extensive discreet market survey across the country and our findings were quite disturbing. We identified patterns of price fixing perpetrated by some market associations, price gouging, and other anti-consumer practices. We noticed that the margin in the prices of imported goods are very disproportionate in many cases; and in the case of locally produced goods, excessively inflated.

In some areas, we discovered that some players are engaged in hoarding of grains, to create artificial scarcity, thereby distorting the market, resulting in unduly high prices of such food items.

To be sure, we cannot deny that the removal of fuel subsidy has brought some discomfort, just as we quite recognize that an unfavorable exchange rate has negatively impacted the cost of production in local currency. But nothing justifies selling a blender sold N140,000 in the U.S. for N950,000 in Nigeria, for instance, representing more than 500 percent inflation of the cost.

Perhaps, the case of BUA cement best illustrates how the middlemen collide sometimes to distort the market and make life more miserable for the consumers at a time when people are already facing economic challenges. You will recall that after a meeting with President Bola Tinubu last year, the Chairman of BUA cement, Alhaji Abdul Samad Rabiu, agreed to bring down the price of cement to N3,500 ex depot as his own way of helping to bring succor to Nigerians passing through economic difficulty. But Alhaji Rabiu’s commendable gesture was frustrated by unscrupulous middlemen who bought cement from BUA at N3,500 and ensured that prices remained at N7,000.

In our investigation, we also discovered that some traders form a cartel in the market and put barriers in form of ridiculous membership fees intended to ensure price fixing in the market. Without joining them, they won’t allow anyone to sell goods in the market or provide services.

Such practices are against the law and constitute some of the offenses the Commission is against, ladies and gentlemen. To be clear, price gouging and price fixing are not only unethical, but patently illegal also under the FCCPA. Section 17 of the Act empowers the Commission to eliminate anti-competitive practices, misleading, unfair, deceptive, or unconscionable marketing, trading, and business practices. Sanctions include fine of up to N10m and a jail term for anyone found guilty by the court.

But rather than applying the full weight of the law in the first instance, the Commission is deliberately adopting the option of dialogue with you the stakeholders to collaborate with us to help check unfair pricing in the market.

To galvanize a more efficient process nationwide, I am pleased to announce that Commission is upgrading its consumer engagement portal to make it more inclusive and interactive and in real time. In simple terms, it means that, when fully calibrated, it will be possible for any consumer who feels aggrieved to lodge a complaint and upload the receipt of the transaction as evidence and such complaint will be processed promptly free of charge with a view to ensuring that justice is done without fear or favour.

At our engagement with stakeholders in Abuja two weeks ago we heard their own stories. They listed factors like insecurity, high costs of transportation and extortion on the road by both state and non-state actors as part of the reasons for prevailing high costs of consumer goods. As a government agency, our responsibility is to get feedback to help policymakers.  At Abuja, we heard the stakeholders loud and clear and shall take the message back to  the government.

At this juncture, let me acknowledge and thank the Lagos State Government for a good step already initiated in this direction. According to a media report few days ago, the Lagos State Government said it would henceforth track the movement produce from the farms to the markets with a view to checkmating those in the habit of hijacking the produce and manipulating the prices at the expense of consumers. Having supported farmers with free inputs and processors, the Lagos State Government is, of course, justified to track the produce to the markets to ensure that the prices at which those produces are being sold are reasonable for average Nigerians. We welcome such a step and encourage other states to emulate this to ensure fair pricing for the benefit of Nigerian consumers.

Before I round off, I think it is also important to report that the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not unaware of the pains caused by the economic reforms being implemented to reposition our economy. As a responsive and sensitive leader, President Tinubu has taken some extraordinary steps by removing taxes on food items, pharmaceutical products, and public transportation. Such laudable initiatives would however be in vain if the benefits are not passed down to the consumers by way of reduced prices of goods and services in the times ahead.

In Abuja, I had enjoined stakeholders to embrace the spirit of patriotism and cooperation at this challenging moment. Here in Lagos, I am echoing that statement. Please, let us talk to ourselves and say no to the exploitation of one another.

*BEING Excerpts from THE KEYNOTE ADDRESS BY THE EXECUTIVE VICE CHAIRMAN/ CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER (FCCPC), MR. TUNJI BELLO, AT A STAKEHOLDERS MEETING ON EXPLOITATIVE PRICING HOSTED BY THE FCCPC AND HELD IN LAGOS ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

... as Odua Investment Company commits to FG's economic revolution

The Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, has restated the firm resolve of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's administration to revolutionise Nigeria's Digital Economy, saying it is on course and fully backed by the necessary support, initiatives and partnerships.

To this effect, he said the Federal Government will continue to open its doors to all willing partners and stakeholders who continue to believe and invest in the Nigeria project, adding that it is just a matter of time before the nation takes its rightful position across the globe.

The Vice President, who gave the assurance on Thursday when the management of Odua Investment Company Limited led by its Chairman, Otunba Bimbo Ashiru, paid him a courtesy visit at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, praised the Company for its initiatives and investment in agriculture, digital economy and MSMEs.

Senator Shettima noted that these sectors remain critical to Nigeria's economic development and future.

"The Southwest region of our country has the enormous capacity to revolutionise the country given its endowments, just as the policies of President Tinubu will, in no time, manifest as the greatest milestones crossed for the development of Nigeria," the VP stated.

On the ''weaponization of fuel subsidy," Vice President Shettima described it as an albatross that hung on the neck of the Nigerian nation, as well as the hitherto manipulated exchange rate.

"Few persons sat on our commonwealth and manipulated our resources. But we are checkmating these manipulations and as can be seen the economy is gradually beginning to recover and pick up. We are, indeed, ready to carry the burden of leadership and together with stakeholders like you, we are crossing the rubicon and the time for reaping will come," VP Shettima further said.

Earlier, the Chairman of Odu’a Investment Company Limited, Otunba Ashiru, who thanked the Vice President for the opportunity to pay him a courtesy call, commended President Tinubu for promoting ease of doing business in Nigeria.

Similarly, he praised the encouragement they got from Vice President Shettima, just as he said, “You could see that businesses are coming in, and that is why we are here. I see a brighter future in this country with what we have seen in general.

“Nigerians have no business going around the world looking for money, especially with the volume of resources at its disposal, more so that our investors are our greatest assets,” he said.

Mr Ashiru expressed optimism that businesses will continue to thrive under the Tinubu administration, even as he called on citizens and investors to take advantage of the opportunities that abound in Nigeria and do business.

“Earlier, it was one of the issues that the Vice President was applauded for. I served as a former Commissioner in my state, and I know that actually, the Office of the Vice President focuses on that aspect of doing business in Nigeria.

“Now, I'm sure Nigeria has moved up the ladder. I remember Nigeria was sometimes ranked around 140 or so. I can tell you that there are lots of opportunities in this country,” he added.

Stanley Nkwocha
Senior Special Assistant to The President on Media & Communications
(Office of The Vice President)