By Azu Ishiekwene

Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, is not a stranger to adversity or its more sinister cousin, sabotage.

One of the bitterest battles he has fought in the last 25 years – the cement war – was against his kinsman and founder of BUA Group, Abdulsamad Rabiu. Folks close to both men have tried to patch them up, but the embers are still smouldering.

Dangote’s face-off with the Kogi State Government under former Governor Yahaya Bello over rights and royalties from Dangote Cement, Obajana, for the local community, was a skirmish compared to the cement war with Rabiu.

Wealth and comfort can be strange bedfellows, often mutually exclusive in the quest to conquer one mountain after the other. Dangote knows this only too well. And nowhere has the lesson been more evident than his pursuit to own a refinery.

Just like that?

I told this story before in an article in May 2023. In the twilight of the Obasanjo administration, the government sold off two of Nigeria’s moribund refineries – Port Harcourt and Kaduna – to Blue Star, a Dangote-led consortium. Blue Star paid $670 million for the plants and walked away, thinking the deal was done. It wasn’t.

In 2007, the government of Umaru Musa Yar’Adua capitulated. It refunded Dangote under pressure from labour unions and vested interests in the refineries on the excuse that the assets were “national patrimony” that should not be sold, “just like that!” It didn’t matter that at the time of sale, both refineries produced less than 20 percent of capacity without hope or promise of improvement.

Dangote took his money and walked away, bruised but unbowed. Six years later, he announced plans to build a private refinery, first in Ogun State, and later, he moved it to Lagos with a capacity of 650,000 bpd – over 200,000 more than the installed capacity of Nigeria’s four refineries combined.

Single train revenge

Dangote’s single-train refinery, originally estimated to cost $12 billion but finished at around $20 billion, is now at the centre of another storm. It’s not about International Oil Companies (IOCs) he accused of trying to undermine him. It’s the more deadly variety of wars: the one from within.

The regulators, particularly the head of the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA), Farouk Ahmed, said in a television interview in the State House with the NNPC Group CEO, Mele Kyari, present, that Dangote Refinery was making products with unsafe Sulphur levels, and also trying to monopolise the industry.

Ahmed can raise valid safety concerns as a regulator and call out a monopoly. The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provides safety standards and a price reflexive framework to prevent a monopoly. Under the Act, the regulator is empowered to act in the interest of consumers and fair play.

Sulfurous things and backstory

Ahmed didn’t say precisely what the tolerable Sulphur level wasor provide evidence that Dangote was trying to become a monopoly. Instead, he contradicted himself by mentioning at least two other refineries, Waltersmith and Aradel, operating at different capacities. If this were a chat in a beer parlour, it would be pardonable.

But to think that the head of a regulatory agency will levy an accusation of unsafe Sulphur levels and offer no response when he was told that neither his agency nor the NNPC had a laboratory is scary. I’m not sure why Kyari stood beside him, grinning. Or why the State House posted the video on its official handle.

But the whole show leaves a bitter, corrosive aftertaste of sulfurous proportions.

Dangote has been accused of many things. He has been accused of feeding off government indulgences, from waivers to tax breaks and preferential forex allocations, even though he was not the only beneficiary. Even the 20 percent stake in the Dangote Refinery, which we are now told the government paid only 7.2 percent, left many questions about that transaction needing to be answered.

On another front, some have accused Dangote of hedging his bet poorly in the 2023 election that brought President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to power, unlike his adversary, Rabiu, who appears to have hit the bull’s eye.

Unkindest cut

But none of these charges is as unkind as those of Ahmed, who, if shame still means anything, should not have uttered the first letter of the “S-word,” never mind the phrase “Sulphur levels.” I’m not sure he can find his way to a viable lab owned by NMDPRA or NNPC because there isn’t one. The regulators rely on third-party labs in Lagos, such as GMO, Sewort, SGS, and others, to vet its imported petroleum products.

Yet, Ahmed chooses to publicly discredit, without proof, products that we are told have been repeatedly ordered by TotalEnergies and BP, among others.

In response to a question from a LEADERSHIP reporter on Tuesday about whether NNPC has a lab, the corporation said, “NNPC conducts rigorous testing on all its products to ensure they meet global safety and quality standards,” adding that NMDPRA can provide verified data through regular official reports. What does that mean in English?

A regulator’s record

And Kyari seemed pleased with this scandalous drama even though NNPC, which he superintends, has spent about $25 billion in turnaround maintenance of moribund refineries in the last 25 years, plus the recent $1.5 billion spent on his watch for more turnaround. One of the subsidiaries, PHRC, employed 487 new staff four years ago and paid N23 billion in salaries without producing one litre of petrol.

All that consumers are asking for, after losing a significant part of the battle for price, is the availability of petroleum products. God knows what they are getting under the current monopolistic system, which permits NNPC to play around with import licences, are long queues, contaminated products, and a regulator mockingly claiming to be a public company.

Suppose Dangote Refinery is in breach of any regulations; what steps have the regulators taken to call the refinery to order or help them overcome, except if they claim there was evidence of a malicious default? Our officials spend hundreds of thousands of dollars touring the world for foreign investors only to chew local investors with a microphone in a fit of what? Rage, sabotage, indiscretion or stupidity?

Feuding parties

The closed-door meeting among the feuding parties, which Tinubu ordered on Monday, may keep them on a leash for a while, but it hardly addresses the underlying issues. If products from the Dangote Refinery currently exceed the Sulphur levels – as Dangote had also said on a different occasion – why can’t the regulator work with the refinery to fix it without a scandalous press conference?

And is the talk about monopoly a fear-induced trope? How can Ahmed even speak of a monopoly when supply is hardly available, and the current distortionist-in-chief is NNPC, the sole importer of petrol and sole awarder of import licences for diesel?

It doesn’t smell good.Dangote Refinery is only 45 percent complete – the entire plant? Yet,Kyari and Ahmed joined former President Muhammadu Buhari in commissioning the plant last year? Seriously?

After years of working with petrol importers in his former life as the chief executive of PPMC, Ahmed is struggling with his new role as a regulator. He deserves public sympathy and can get it without being a retailer of beer parlour gossip or a bagman for vested interests.

Ishiekwene is Editor-In-Chief of LEADERSHIP and author of the new bookWriting for Media and Monetising It

By Valentine Obienyem

Besides the trending old lyrics from Mike Ejeagha, “gwo gwo gwo gwom”, another issue that gained traction on social media platforms was the trademark diatribes from Mr. Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser to President Bola Tinubu. In his statements, he portrayed Mr. Peter Obi as an incurable anarchist without any basis in fact. The beginning of Onanuga’s  release immediately sets the tone for the entire message: “Obi should be held responsible if the planned protest turns into anarchy.” By this statement, he is implying that Obi is behind the planned protest of 1st August. Even his response to the threat of court action shows that he is enjoying the furore caused by his media outburst, as sadists often do.

Although I have heard of Onanuga’s as the founder of “The News” Magazine, I had not taken the time to truly understand him until now. I viewed his recklessness and that of others during electioneering as influenced by the needs of the time. Yes, during electioneering, lesser minds seize the opportunity to hurl abuses, obloquies, and vituperations at people. However, the recent recklessness cannot be justified by any known rational principle. Comparing Onanuga  as the editor of “The News” and Onanuga as a Special Adviser reveals an unchanging pattern of recklessly driving wedges between people and setting institutions against one another.The practice and propagation of lies have remained the consuming interest of his life.  This is disheartening because the man we are discussing is almost seventy years old and is expected to have matured from impulse to thoughtfulness. With this in mind, my immediate reaction came in the form of a Facebook post, where I wrote:

“Yesterday, Mr. Bayo Onanuga claimed that Mr. Peter Obi was behind the planned protest. My relief upon hearing this was that it did not come from Chief Joe Igbokwe. Ordinarily, he would have loved to break such news as a way of reassuring them of his continued loyalty.

On the surface, Onanuga appears to be a great journalist when measured by his long-standing visibility in the field. However, from seeing him as he is – in his nakedness, he has continually shown us that he was overrated all along. He is becoming a victim of his own undoing. They now make us view with suspicion those who pretend to be democrats.

Come to think of it, why would Obi plan a protest? Show me any of his speeches or releases where Obi calls out anyone by name. He consistently addresses issues and offers advice. Thus, linking him to any planned protest is an attempt to divert attention from the real issues. They are simply revealing the secret of their guild: seeking to stop Obi at all costs. Who in Nigeria today does not know that there is hunger in the land? As it is said, ‘a hungry man is an angry man.’ If you do not want unrest, tackle the enemy of the people—hunger—and leave Obi alone.”

Many supporters of Obi are not even aware that a protest is being planned, for the simple reason that Obi always urges them to focus on finding ways to make Nigeria great. Those who follow him and his tweets would know by now that his consuming passion is not the destruction of Nigeria, but how the country can be rescued from the highway robbers who have hijacked and destroyed it. Judging by Onanuga’s remarks, one can conclude that he is an active member of the gang. This publication many Nigerians are reacting against is just one item in a hundred irritations that have come to characterised him. Among those that work with Mr. President, he is the number one in promoting tribal hatred and granting imprimatur to foolish decisions.

Reading his release raises many questions about him. Consider his analysis here, clothed in perplexing buffoonery: “The protesters’ call for revolution and ending an elected government is a civilian coup which amounts to high treason.” Rarely do we witness a man approaching seventy speak in such an uncouth manner.

Onanuga is worried that some Nigerians are planning a peaceful protest against the hunger in the land. But it has not occurred to him that those planning the protest were said to have even written to the security agencies requesting police protection, as they are determined to do it within the law. What this implies is that they are not faceless, nor are they wearing masks.

No nation loves or enjoys protests of any type. Engaged and happy citizens would not even protest in the first place. What Onanuga’s should have looked out for are the conditions provoking Nigerians into protest. Are Nigerians hungry? Are Nigerians secure? Are Nigerians treated like citizens with full rights and as human beings? Can we gauge the government’s sensitivity or lack thereof to the hunger in the land by its decision to purchase jets costing billions of naira? Was Nigeria as bad as it currently is when the current President, under President Goodluck Jonathan, called for a revolution, understood as weeding out bad things and hastening the rebirth of society? Is the response an offensive display of their depravity? These are necessary questions that we may find appropriate to start from.

As  Onanuga’s recklessness trends and amid the foregoing questions, he reminds us of the need to resort to history. In the history of nations, protests, whether peaceful or destructive, have always been the product of grievances and are therefore part of history, which we may support or condemn but cannot stop. Once you push a people to their elastic limits, they are bound to react. In our dear country, growth is impeded because there are chaos, disasters, and obstacles that need to be roughly cleansed. Revolution, like cleansing, is the removal of rubbish, the surgery of the superfluous. It comes only when many things are ready to die. Nigeria, in truth, has died many times before. We fought the civil war and experienced many coups in the past. These deaths achieved nothing because attempts at rebirth ended in stillbirth. The country is again begging to be killed on all fronts, so that it may be reborn. But the fact is that Obi is going about preaching his own version of how the country can be reborn through implementing the right policies and getting the leaders to behave as true leaders in both word and deed – anarchism is alien to him. Other Nigerians with opposing viewpoints cannot be annexed as Obi’s promoters.

The American Revolution was caused by, among other factors, economic hardship. Whether we talk about the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, or the Arab Spring, the recurring causative factors are corruption, economic hardship, economic inequality, injustice, and political repression. In Nigeria today, the question is: To what extent are these factors at work, and what are the solutions to get the country working again?

For some, part of the solution is to bring these issues to the consciousness of those in power by making them hear about it since they are hard of hearing. For people like Peter Obi, as he has effectively demonstrated over the years, the solution lies in identifying these anomalies, bringing them to the attention of those in government, and offering advice on what to do to get the country working. In doing this, he is infinitely ready to engage anyone in a duel of minds, showing his fertile intellect.

At every engagement, he impresses everyone with his range of knowledge of the economy, his tenacious memory, intellectual acumen, penetrating judgment, and understanding of governance. It is this brilliance that troubles people like Bayo—the fascination with his polymorphous mind. Selfish men, they are already worrying about what such brilliance would do to them in 2027, while Obi is simply concerned with how to uplift the country today.

At almost 70,  Onanuga is a poor role model to Nigerians and particularly to his Ijebu people. The Ijebu people on average are renowned for their industrious traits and versatile minds, not given to extravagant lies to attract attention and feed from the crumbs. They generally take things in stride and are paragons of management and consistency, virtues that seem directly opposite to Onanuga’s, who lacks his people’s gaiety and grace, the humour and wit, the refinement and manners of a cultured Ijebu man.

Peter Obi is a treasure not just to Nigeria but to humanity. We cannot strive to demonise him here when the entire world is celebrating him. He remains one of the leaders who can now only be found in the pages of Plutarch.

Obienyem, a Lawyer and prolific commentator on national issues, wrote from Awka