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OPINION: Petrol Pains, Wilderness Wanderings

Published

1 year ago

May 6, 2024

By Lasisi Olagunju

A young taxi driver sat on the bonnet of his car some years ago thoroughly frustrated by Nigeria’s unending petrol mess. A television reporter asked him to speak on his experience in that filling station where he sat, stranded. He looked straight into the camera and said he wanted “the world to come to an end, this moment. I want all of us to die – all.” He thought Nigeria was a wilderness with a succession of fake Moses leading the country from Egypt to Egypt. To the taxi driver, mass death of victims and their victimisers would be the neat, equitable way to end all suffering. I watched the video and heard more than what the gentleman said. People who think and say what he said are persons who have run and got to the end of running. They are people who have shifted and shifted and have hit the wall.

Over the course of life, suffering, one way or the other, is inevitable. We do not need a priest to convince us of that. But, why is it that here, in this country, time and change give no relief to the poor?

As I write this, everyone is at the petrol station – exactly as they were 30 years ago when they thought democracy was the messiah that would dry their tears. In petrol stations where there are no queues, the price there is killing; where the price smiles a little, bedlam reigns. If matters remain as they are, driving a car anywhere in Nigeria will soon be a mark of the beast, the ultimate evil. Very soon (and I am so scared to say this), having money to buy petrol will be an exposure to marks of the dragon – the kind that is in the Christian Bible: ten horns, seven heads, “with ten crowns on his horns, and on each head a blasphemous name.” Why is this democracy this ugly and so unprofitable to the people?

There is a joke about a man from Israel who demanded to know why Moses promised his ancestors good life, took them out to wander in the wilderness for forty years only to deposit them in a land that has no oil. I won’t be shocked to hear this said about our democracy. What is the worth of that struggle and that vote that birthed this suffering?

Our dog boasted in the last election that there was no danger in Tiger’s forest. That boast appears to have killed it. A saying in Yoruba approximates this: Ajá kì í dán’nu kò séwu lóko ẹkùn. Stealthy, strong Tiger is an ambush, apex predator; dog is one of its preys. The wisdom here eluded many who refused to trust the truth. They are now left behind, stranded by their faith in man born of woman. In their bowl of gaari, they now have water in destructive excess.

FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Sending Ooni Of Ife To Tinubu

You are a very senior professor. Your monthly salary is N700,000, pre-tax. This past weekend, you and other petrol users bought a litre for N1,000. Your car uses 10 litres of petrol per working day. There are five working days in a week. That gives your car 50 litres of petrol per week, the cost is N50,000. There are four weeks in a month. Fifty thousand naira in four places makes it N200,000 – just to fuel your car. Because your residence is allocated Band E by NEPA, your ‘I-better-pass-my-neighbour’ generator will use 10 litres of petrol per day. In 30 days, that gives you 300 litres of fuel. At N1,000 per litre, the cost is N300,000. Do the maths. Petrol alone takes N500,000 from your pre-tax N700,000 salary. Tax takes about N120,000. Do the maths again. What is the way out? The Yoruba will join you to ask: Kí ni ònà àbáyo? Kí ni?

With ‘Darkness Falls’ as its title, the second part of Ngugi Wa Thiongo’s Weep Not, Child is about a country in distress, about a village where light is morbid and darkness is saviour. It is about a home that is no longer a place for telling good stories. It is here that we are asked to “turn to the Gospel according to St Matthew, Chapter 24.” Here we are told that we “shall hear of wars and rumours of wars” and that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in diverse places.” We are told that as horrible as these occurrences are, “they are (just) the beginning of sorrows…And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”

Could this moment be Nigeria’s hour of that prophecy? The havoc wreaked in town today is worse than the experience of the ill-starred, anecdotal sentry of Apomu whose oracle (ifa) got stolen and his wife snatched. He reached for his divining chain (òpẹ̀lẹ̀) and saw it in the mouth of an audacious dog. He pursued the dog to retrieve his last hope but the dog ran and jumped into a deep well. While panting, the distraught man was asked what next? “It is time to leave this town,” was his response – (Ìlọ yá Oníbodè Àpòmù, wón kó o ní’fá, wón gbà á l’óbìnrin, òpẹ̀lẹ̀ tí yíò tún fi tọ ẹsẹ̀ e rè, ajá tún gbé e lọ. Ó lé ajá, ajá kó sí kànga. Wón ní, ‘Ilọ yá àbí kò yá?’ Ó ní, ìlọ yáá…).” Today is worse than that hopeless situation. I have never been as afraid for Nigeria as I have been in the last one week.

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: For Yoruba Muslims And Pentecostals

The people are hopeless and helpless but they are quiet. And that is dangerous. There is a passage in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart which warns about silence and its potent danger: “Mother Kite once sent her daughter to bring food. She went and brought back a duckling. ‘You have done very well,’ said Mother Kite to her daughter, ‘but tell me, what did the mother of this duckling say when you swooped and carried its child away?’ ‘It said nothing,’ replied the young kite. ‘It just walked away.’ ‘You must return the duckling,’ said Mother Kite. ‘There is something ominous behind the silence.’ And so Daughter Kite returned the duckling and took a chick instead. ‘What did the mother of this chick do?’ asked the old kite. ‘It cried and raved and cursed me,’ said the young kite. ‘Then we can eat the chick,’ said her mother. ‘There is nothing to fear from someone who shouts.’ Nigeria’s streets are scanty and sad; neighbourhoods are dank and dark. Where the ice of fuel scarcity appears to be thawing, the price has remained prohibitively high. In food markets, traders’ looks are forlorn; buyers’ heartbeats are irregular. There is darkness in every home where light used to shine. Yet, there is quiet, silence, midnight, graveyard chill where prophets used to warn.

In Matt Lorenz’s ‘The Meaning of life in the Wilderness’, we are told that “the wilderness is a space where human beings can go morally astray.” True, many and more have gone astray here. Henry Bugbee, in his The Inward Morning, says that “our true home is (the) wilderness.” I read this and wanted to disagree. I wanted to ask how our home could be the wildness -uncultivated, uninhabited, inhospitable wild. But, then, I remember William Butler Yeats’s thoughtful line: “…the world is more full of weeping than you can understand.”

As long as we breathe, we keep hoping (and praying) for deliverance from evil. There is a line of divine promise in Ngugi’s ‘Darkness Falls’: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved…” He was quoting the Bible.

We will endure this to the end because we’ve been promised salvation. But, when is the end and where is the saviour? Or, when is the saviour coming? The government is quiet and silent. It acts the perfect I-don’t-care way of lords who have climbed the hills and have seen the very end of the world. But its defenders are not quiet. They blame the past and point at similar acts of official betrayal. What is in uniformity is no longer a shame. There is no new thing under the sun. They open history books of countries outside Africa, the first world. They say “even America once suffered what we suffer. We will be out of the problem one day.” They say the media of that and other countries still reminisce about their own era of anomie. One of such reflections is Reis Thebault’s “Long lines, high prices and fisticuffs”, a Washington Post’s 2023 video on the 1970s petrol shortage bedlam in America. “The line of cars stretches for blocks. Pumps run dry. Newspapers warn of a great ‘gas crunch.’ President urges calm. Panicked motorists turn on one another.” Thebault wrote, mimicking headlines from Nigeria’s future. If the abobaku of this regime come to see this Washington Post content, they will grab it with eureka; they will use it as a justification for the criminal betrayal that professed this suffering. What a country!

MORE FROM THE AUTHOR: OPINION: Bobrisky’s Masque, Yahaya Bello’s Boa

The elephant’s hunger is the shame of the forest. America would have remained where it was in 1970 if what it had were bumbling leaders like ours. To the US, the owner would rather starve than for the thief to be without food. We have that proverb, the United States appropriated it long ago to solve its “pumps run dry” problem. I always wonder why the elephant of oil-rich Nigeria keeps rumbling in the forest and goes to bed hungry. Imagine the Eskimo queueing for ice. But here, children of butchers fight over bones.

What really is the cause of this fuel scarcity? There is neither cohesion nor coherence in the little we’ve heard from persons who sit atop our welfare. All we’ve seen (and we are seeing) are quick-and-slow marches of crass confusion. What are they doing apart from fixing themselves up in vaults? The sheep of Nigerians won’t forget if they do well and provide it just bran. But they are behaving like àgbà òsìkà sowing suffering in people’s lives. They soil their breast pockets with red oil of impunity and keep a straight face. Is it true that this is all about jacking up the price of petrol as instructed by the holders of the Nigerian yam and knife? It is like land grabbers setting fire to a whole market because they covet the land. They are killing us without drawing a sword (apanimáyodà). But, they can eat their excess without scorching the city. Unfortunately, that is what they are doing with their take-it-or-leave it disposition to the petrol wickedness they put on the table. It is dangerous.

I borrow again from Yeats. In his ‘The Wind Among the Reeds’, the poet tells the powerful that he, “being poor” has only his dreams to nurture and keep. Then he begs them: “I have spread my dreams under your feet;/ Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.” The people are the eye of the earth. If this government must tread on them, it should do so gently.

The author, Dr. Lasisi Olagunju is the Saturday Editor of Nigerian Tribune, and a columnist in the same newspaper. This article was first published by the paper (Nigerian Tribune). It is published here with his permission.

News

Why We Expanded Presidential Amnesty Scholarship Scheme — Otuaro

Published

12 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

Otuaro (middle) in a group photograph with the PAP foreign scholarship students in the United Kingdom after an interactive session in London on Saturday, 25 October, 2025.

The Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme, Dr Dennis Otuaro, has expressed his unwavering commitment to ensuring that more indigent students and communities of the Niger Delta benefit from the PAP scholarship scheme.

He stated this while explaining what informed his decision to expand the scheme and increase formal education opportunities for poor students, and to build a huge manpower base in the region.

A statement issued by Mr Igoniko Oduma, Special Assistant on Media to the PAP boss said Otuaro spoke during an interactive session in London on Saturday with the beneficiaries of the scholarship initiative deployed for undergraduate and post-graduate programmes in universities across the United Kingdom.

The engagement, which was at the instance of the PAP boss, provided an opportunity for the Office and the scholarship students to discuss issues pertaining to their welfare and challenges with a view to addressing them.

Otuaro said that while in-country scholarship deployment was 3800 in the 2024/2025 academic year, the figure increased to 3900 in the 2025/2026 and foreign scholarships were about 200.

He attributed the increase in deployment to the massive support of President Bola Tinubu and the Office of the National Security Adviser.

Otuaro stressed that he was greatly encouraged by the President and the NSA, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, and that he knows how impressed both of them are concerning the PAP initiatives, which align with the Renewed Hope Agenda.

He reiterated his call on the students to justify the huge investment in their education by the Federal Government by studying hard to make good grades.

He also urged them to conduct themselves and be responsible ambassadors of Nigeria while in the U.K, stressing that “you will be adding value to your families and communities when you complete your programmes successfully.”

The PAP helmsman said, “We want the scholarship programme to impact more students and communities in the Niger Delta. That’s why we have expanded it and increased formal education opportunities.

“We want you to take this opportunity very seriously so that the government, too, will be encouraged. I know how much support His Excellency, President Bola Tinubu GCFR, gives to the Presidential Amnesty Programme.

“Mr President and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, are very impressed with what we are doing. On your behalf I would like to, once again , thank His Excellency and the NSA for giving you this life-changing opportunity. We are confident that Mr President and the NSA will continue to support us.

“The knowledge you are receiving in your institutions today is to enable you plan yourself and prepare for the future. Whatever knowledge you gain cannot be taken from you.

“So as PAP scholarship students, we expect responsible and good behaviour from you. Government is investing heavily in you and you have the obligation to justify the investment. Be agents of change and avoid acts of mischief while in the U.K.”

News

OPINION: A ‘Crazy’ African Nation, Where Citizens Eat And Drink Football

Published

14 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

By Tony Erha

It was in October, a semi-summer-month and twilight of the year that ushers in the chilling and extreme winter. A nonagenarian woman gave me a friendly smile that revealed cheeky dimples. As I bowed respectfully to her ripened age, she offered a leathery hand for a handshake, which I received warmly, returning her infectious smile. For a youth who prays for longevity shouldn’t deprive the elderly of the walking stick. I had helped her, carrying a furred handbag to our seats on a night-long intercity bus, from Istanbul to Ankara, in Turkey, the Balkan nation, where we stopped over, in year 2004.

She spoke Turkish rapidly, whilst I retorted in a passable and incoherent Turkish language that ‘I don’t speak the official language of the only country of the world that is located on two continents; Europe and Asia. “You American?” She asked in English. It was obvious that my jeans, necklace and a fez cap that I upturned, in the manner of the Yankees, might have portrayed me as one. “No. I am a Nigerian”, I said, dragging the words. “You Nee-jay-rian!” she exclaimed, whilst I nodded confidently. Then she was elated; “Okocha Jay-Jay!” She spoke to others in the bus that clapped and hailed. I wondered why a 91 years-old-woman, was so passionate about football and one of its heroes, as if she was a youth.

At her request, an old video of a football match showed the mesmerising display of Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, viewed on a television set affixed to the bus. There were instantaneous excitement and catcalls each time Okocha, the great football ‘talisman’ from Nigeria, did his ball flips and dribble-runs that displaced his opponents, earning him one of the few (if not the greatest) football entertainers in football’s history. It was as if the video tape, recorded in his notable plays in Besiktas, a Turkish club side, was a live match. So great was Okocha’s global fame that the old woman relived again; “Jay Jay Okocha is a dangerous footballer, who’s full of tricks on the field of play. The only trick he didn’t do with the ball from his bag of football artistry was to play on top the swimming pool”. In Mustafa Ataturk’s nation, footballers of Nigeria’s decent had and still make their soccer very eventful.

Victor Osimhen, the leggy playmaker and striker with a dye-hair like the white mushroom head, who recently renewed his contract with Galatasaray, a Turkish top team, is also a Nigerian, who has received the applause in the peninsula country and across the globe like Jay Jay Okocha. Candidly, Oshimen, the goal mechine, who is a tonic to the Turks and football fans across the world, also does the unimaginative with the round leather, but certainly not with the same fascinating skills of Jay Jay! But the Turkish fans are readily tilted to football fanaticism.

Victor Osimhen

If it’s ‘fanatic-fans’ in Turkish football, it’s certainly ‘supporters hooliganism’ in the United Kingdom (UK), where association soccer (football) was founded in 1863, with similar kicking games played in Greece, China and Rome since 2,000 years. In UK, football is played with fanfares, pool betting and media vuvuzela. English soccer is a gainful entertainment industry raking in huge gate fees from plays, promotions, television and media razzmatazz, which is often imitated in Nigeria, with passions and ‘occult’ following. So worrisome was the ‘social hype and lawlessness’ youths and others attach to English soccer that security operatives have constant migraine fighting soccer addiction and frequent street brawls.

Jay Jay Okocha, Nwankwo Kanu, Dan Amokachi, Taribo West and other Nigerian stars, that once dominated and currently rule other foreign clubs, opened the floodlight of extremist football following into the country. Once upon a time, the then Prince Charles (now the king of England), was spotted (with young boys) playing the game, inside the Buckingham Palace, all wearing jersey number ’10’ with Jay Jay Okocha’s name inscribed). That the number-one-global-royalty adored soccer by wearing the jersey of a footballer from a third-world African nation, somewhat illustrates that which is often said about soccer being more than a mere sport. ‘Football Tripper’, a British online news porter, describes soccer as “oxygen” to numerous men and women. In Brazil, the South American nation, there is a deity called “Soccer”, as well as it’s a vivacious Reggae, a unique music genre in Jamaica.

Still, it is food and sups in Nigeria. In this Africa’s most populous nation, with plentiful viewing centres and liquor spots, there are live television football tournaments and soccer video games, with consumable food, alcoholics, carbonated drinks and some ‘unlawful substances’ that are at the behest of business owners and ‘intoxicated’ fans.

In what soccer dramatics came to know as ‘the Dammam Miracle’, viewing centres, beer parlours and restaurants were instantly sold out in the country, in 1989, after ‘footbocrazy’ Nigerians, stormed the streets in prolonged wild celebrations. For the Nigerian U-20 football team, at the FIFA World Youth Championship, held in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, came back from a four-goal deficit to level up and defeat the Russian counterpart, making the Nigerian team the first to come back from a semi-final to win a FIFA tournament. Soccer, indeed, is a crazy sport in Nigeria. Once upon a time, a man had shattered the screen of his expensive television, because Austin Jay Jay Okocha, his favourite star, had lost a penalty in a continental match!

It’s said that football, especially when the Nigerian national teams of men and woman play, tends to unite Nigerians than other national blights that turn them apart. Now, the current national fanaticism is for the Victor Osimhen-inspired Super Eagles, to qualify for the 2026 World Cup gala, even though it has to go the extra obstacles of playing more legs, whereas the team had frittered the early opportunities to qualify.

And sensing that most Nigerians care less of the economic woes that plagued them, but for the football fad, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the nation’s President, would cash-in to feed their ago awarding huge cash to high profile football tournaments and wins, like he recently accorded the Super Falcons, the female national team, for achieving a similitude of the Dammam miracle, to bring home a coveted African Cup of Nations (AFCON) trophy!

News

Ex-soldiers Fume Over Lifetime Benefits For Sacked Service Chiefs

Published

19 hours ago

October 26, 2025

Editor

The sacked Chief of Defence Staff, General Christopher Musa, and two other service chiefs, Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Hasan Abubakar, and Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Emmanuel Ogalla, are set to receive generous retirement benefits.

The benefits include bulletproof vehicles, domestic aides, and lifetime medical care.

Their exit follows President Bola Tinubu’s appointment of new service chiefs on Friday.

General Olufemi Oluyede has been named the new Chief of Defence Staff, while Major-General W. Shaibu takes over as Chief of Army Staff.

Air Vice Marshal Sunday Kelvin Aneke becomes the new Chief of Air Staff, and Rear Admiral I. Abbas the Chief of Naval Staff. The Chief of Defence Intelligence, Major-General E.A.P. Undiendeye, retains his position.

The President’s Special Adviser on Media and Public Communication, Sunday Dare, said in a statement on Friday that the removal of the service chiefs was in furtherance of the Federal Government’s ongoing efforts to strengthen Nigeria’s national security architecture.

According to the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service for Officers and Enlisted Personnel in the Nigerian Armed Forces, signed by President Tinubu on December 14, 2024, the service chiefs are entitled to substantial retirement packages upon disengagement.

The document stipulates that each retiring service chief will receive a bulletproof SUV or an equivalent vehicle, to be maintained and replaced every four years by the military.

They are also entitled to a Peugeot 508 or an equivalent backup vehicle.

Beyond the vehicles, the package includes five domestic aides — two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener — along with an aide-de-camp or security officer, and a personal assistant or special assistant.

They will also retain three service drivers, a service orderly, and a standard guard unit comprising nine soldiers.

The benefits extend to free medical treatment both in Nigeria and abroad, as well as the retention of personal firearms to be retrieved upon their demise.

However, while officers of lieutenant-general rank and equivalents are entitled to international and local medical care worth up to $20,000 annually, the benefits for the service chiefs, though not stated in the document, are believed to be considerably higher.

The HTCOS reads, “Retirement benefits for CDS and Service Chiefs: The following benefits shall be applicable: one bulletproof SUV or equivalent vehicle to be maintained by the Service and to be replaced every four years. One Peugeot 508 or equivalent backup vehicle.

‘’Retention of all military uniforms and accoutrement to be worn for appropriate ceremonies; five domestic aides (two service cooks, two stewards, and one civilian gardener); one Aide-de-Camp/security officer; one Special Assistant (Lt/Capt or equivalents) or one Personal Assistant (Warrant Officer or equivalents); standard guard (nine soldiers).

“Three service drivers; one service orderly; escorts (to be provided by appropriate military units/formation as the need arises); retention of personal firearms (on his demise, the personal firearm(s) shall be retrieved by the relevant service); and free medical cover in Nigeria and abroad.”

However, the policy specifies that such entitlements apply only if the retired officers have not accepted any other appointment funded from public resources — except when such an appointment is made by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

In such cases, the officers, according to the document, will only receive allowances commensurate with the new role rather than a full salary.

Retired soldiers protest lavish perks

Reacting, some retired soldiers decried what they described as the luxurious benefits and entitlements reserved for service chiefs and senior military officers.

They lamented that junior personnel continued to suffer neglect and unpaid entitlements despite years of service to the nation.

The retired officers expressed frustration over the disparity in welfare and treatment between senior and junior ranks within the military.

One of the leaders of the discharged soldiers demanding their owed entitlements, Sgt. Zaki Williams, expressed frustration over the entitlements reserved for the service chiefs.

Speaking in an emotional tone, Williams, who claimed to be speaking for more than 700 soldiers in his group, said many retired non-commissioned officers had been abandoned despite dedicating their lives to defending the country.

He said, “I don’t really understand how our people in Nigeria do things. The people at the top always do things to favour only themselves. They don’t care about the poor or the junior ones who sacrificed everything.”

The retired sergeant recalled that government officials had made several promises to improve their welfare, but none had been fulfilled.

“Since the day they made those promises to us, we went back home and didn’t hear anything again. Everything just ended there. We’ve been waiting till now, but nothing has happened,” he added.

Williams said the situation had left many of his colleagues demoralised and divided over whether to continue pressing for their entitlements.

“Some of us said we should protest again, but others refused. We told them that day that we were not going for another protest. If the government wants to help us, they should help us. If not, we’re done,” he said.

He also accused senior military officers of frustrating efforts by the defence ministry to address the concerns of retired personnel.

According to Williams, life after service has been extremely difficult for most of them who retired voluntarily or were discharged without compensation.

“How can someone retire after years of service and still not get their entitlement? Many of us can’t even build a house. The senior officers have houses, cars, and everything good, but the rest of us have nothing,” he said.

He added that the little compensation given to some was not enough to rebuild their lives.

“If they give you N2m today, what can you really start with it in this country? You have children, family, and responsibilities, yet you can’t even afford a plot of land,” he said.

Expressing disappointment, he said most junior officers had lost faith in the system.

“We’ve handed everything over to God,” he said quietly. “We’ve cried and done our best. They promised us, but in the end, it’s still zero. We haven’t seen anything. That’s why many of us are now silent.”

Another retired soldier, Abdul Isiak, lamented that promises made to retired personnel had remained unfulfilled, leaving many struggling to survive.

He said, “All you said they would give to them would be done promptly, and they are more than what we need to sustain our lives. This is very unfair. We have suffered a lot, and they’re yet to give us our entitlements after leaving the service. What is our offence? Is it because we are junior officers?”

The former sergeant said the senior officers continued to enjoy generous retirement packages while lower ranks were denied their due benefits.

“We are preparing for another protest for them to pay us. This is very bad,” he said.

(PUNCH)