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Each time Nigerian leaders eat palm oil, they prove they’re cursed

IF you have had something to eat today, chances are that you have already eaten palm oil. Palm oil is vital to our sustenance as a people. We’ve been eating it for centuries, but it is not rain from the skies; it is the product of refinement. The oil palm fruit is the natural product God made; it is human intelligence (still anointed by God) that turns it into palm oil. Palm oil is derived from the outer layers of palm kernel; palm kernel oil is created from kernels. As you may be well aware, the pulp left after oil is rendered from the kernel is formed into palm kernel cake, a high-protein feed for dairy cattle which experts say can also be burnt in boilers to generate electricity.

In Yorubaland, palm kernel (eyin) is poured out into a pit where the makers press out the oil, as it were, with their feet. The oil that comes to the surface is boiled and when it cools, further sieving gives you great palm oil for your cooking. If you are Yoruba, you probably know that palm kernel oil (adin ekuro/adin dudu) is used to treat convulsion in children, to create warmth in the body, and as a skin and hair moisturizer. Adin dudu can also be applied to wipe off stretch marks. As a matter of fact, adin dudu is frequently applied to the skull of underweight children. From the palm fruit, you have what the Yoruba call iha, used in cooking; you also have oguso, a kind of burner or flame facilitator if you are cooking with wood or charcoal. From fresh palm fruit, you can also get something called ikete; which can be used to eat yam.

How is PMS made? Through similar processes. The following is from https://www.cer-rec.gc.ca: “In the first step of the refining process, crude oil is heated in a furnace until most of it vaporizes into a gas. The liquids and vapours then enter an atmospheric distillation tower, which separates the liquids and vapours into different streams, or fractions, based on differences in boiling points. Heavier streams, which have higher boiling points, are collected at the bottom of the tower in liquid form. Meanwhile, lighter streams like gasoline vapours, naphtha, and kerosene, which boil and condense at lower temperatures, rise to the top of the tower in gaseous form where they are collected. Components that boil somewhere in between, such as diesel and medium-weight gas oil, are collected and withdrawn from the distillation tower at intermediate points in the column.” So why can’t leaders who eat palm oil everyday produce motor oil?

Nigerian leaders export crude and import PMS. Because the naira is weak and Nigeria produces virtually nothing, a fortune is sunk into this importation and the payment of subsidies (Buhari paid nearly N8trn). We must ask these people: since you were born, which day have you been to the market without finding palm oil? Do you think it is the product of magic or that it was imported? If the palm oil producers were like you, would you get palm oil? You eat salt everyday. Have you ever stopped to think where it came from? It comes from under the water and from rocks, with men putting themselves through great danger. Light, you cannot produce, and public taps are drier than a desert. You eat salt and palm oil, the products of chemical refinement, without reflecting on your failure to provide PMS, another product of chemical refinement. If you had approached PMS production like the matter of daily survival that it is, just like palm oil, it would be everywhere today. People would pick and choose as they like. Adin agbon (coconut oil) is produced every blessed day and you can’t produce motor oil? Are you for real?

Why do we get palm oil in the market everyday? Because its production is liberalised. And that’s why I’m not against deregulation of PMS. But deregulation isn’t mere subsidy removal, and a statement such as “subsidy is gone” in the face of Nigeria’s continuing maintenance of moribund refineries, NNPCL’s dominance of oil imports and the fixing of PMS prices, is sheer gobbledygook. If subsidy is gone, then there must be price variation, with petrol stations selling at different prices. There must be price leadership; that is, petrol firms using pricing mechanisms to beat their competitors.

Let’s explain this concept using GSM as an example. GSM subscribers used to be charged on per minute basis, but Mike Adenuga came on the scene and delivered Nigerians from that bondage. He not only crashed the price of SIM cards, he introduced per second billing and Nigerians went wild with joy. Now, with the so-called removal of subsidy, there is no price leadership and no competition. Refineries maintained at steep public cost still constitute an eyesore. Dangote refinery will soon churn out fuel but he will have no competition. What is deregulation without competition?

The government makes crude oil refining to look like some esoteric science, but the lie is regularly busted by criminals who steal and refine the oil everyday. Now when the government gets wind of this business, it sets the illegal refineries, and with them the atmosphere, on fire. This is sheer buffoonery. The refineries produce PMS, so why not take them over for official use? Why not seize the equipment, however crude, and turn them over to the government? Who says crude oil cannot be produced through crude methods? And why not have mini refineries to give Nigerians relief?

In September last year, Nigerian leaders’ wickedness was punctuated by the report that even with the country’s refineries shut down, the NNPCL had left over N136 billion as operational deficits across its three refineries in Kaduna, Port Harcourt and Warri. Despite shutting down the 445,000-capacity refineries for over two years, it retained the over 1,701 staff as it continued the so-called rehabilitation works at the Port Harcourt refinery for $1.5 billion and the Warri and Kaduna refineries for $1.4 billion. Yet in November 2020, the NNPCL’s CEO, Mele Kyari, had indicated that the refineries were shut down because their operations were no longer sustainable. The world’s oil-producing countries raked in huge profits but the NNPCL deposited nothing into the government’s account in six months: the N2.38 trillion revenue made from oil sales was expended on projects.

Each day Nigerian leaders eat palm oil, they confirm their place in hell. They literally eat the truth but can’t digest it. What a bunch of rogues!

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