Nigeria: Who Will Say, 'To Hell With Oil Money'?

By Idang Alibi

opinion

As is very well known to many, especially music fans, the late global reggae superstar, Bob Marley, died on May 11, 1981. As to be expected of a situation whereby a wealthy pater familias and polygamous husband died without leaving a will, a monumental legal tangle ensured.

A most intense struggle arose among his numerous wives and women and his equally innumerable children and court-appointed administrators, over Marley's vast estate. The man once told an interviewer that he will have children "as numerous as the sands of the sea". And for sure, he did.

You can therefore imagine how the competition among uncountable, contending and contentious wives and uncountable, contending children from rival women claiming Marley's paternity, would be over his property. Thrown into this mix, the sharp lawyers with their lawyerly shenanigans all in the efforts to reap where they did not sow and you will better appreciate just how intense the competition for Marley's enormous wealth and riches was.

While the squabbling was on, one of his sons-Ziggy is his name-was quick to notice that the lawyer-administrators of his father's estate were the ones making a kill even when no sibling of the dead music star had taken a cent of their father's or husband's money. Ziggy, an intelligent lad if you ask me, saw that waiting for a share of his father's wealth was a waste of time, effort and of his psychological well-being. Pissed off by it all, Ziggy told himself and everyone else that," To hell with all this Babylonian shenanigan. Let me go and make for myself my own money". He abandoned the contest for a share of his father's estate, launched a solo music career and in no time became a successful, wealthy young man. Eventually the titanic struggle for his father's wealth was settled in 1991, ten clear years after his father's death. If he had decided to wait that long for "justice", he would have, like the crab in our folk tale, developed squinted eyes. His music talent would not have been developed and he himself and the world would have been the poorer for it.

What is the moral of this story? It is that sometimes the pursuit of what is often called "a common patrimony" can often become distractive, debilitating and act as a huge disincentive for those who have the skills or the opportunities to create their own wealth or to produce more wealth for the common patrimony so that everyone can have enough and stop squabbling over the little that is now available for sharing. And such has been the fate of Nigeria. The number one reason why this blessed country has not made as much progress as it ought to have made is the availability of easy oil money from the creeks of the Niger Delta for everyone to share or for a few to loot.

The story of Nigeria from the early seventies to date is nothing but the story of an internecine struggle among the ruling classes from the various tribes and regions of the country on how to position themselves in order to be in a pole position to superintend the sharing, or more appropriately, the stealing, of the oil money. And if you are in a vantage enough position, it is your prerogative to appropriate as much as possible of it for one's self, tribesmen, friends and well wishers. In this struggle, plan or vision for the progress and development of the whole nation is not important. What matters is to be brave, inconsiderate and clever enough to devise a stratagem of how to capture power at the centre and be in-charge of oil blocks and the administration of the proceeds of oil business. This truth has defined the politics of Nigeria since the 70s to this day. Many will offer some insincere patriotic sentiments about why they want to lead Nigeria at the centre but do not be deceived by their honeyed talks. The stark truth is that how to be in control of the sharing of easy oil money is the driving force of their ambition masquerading as a call for national service. No one has called most of them and many of them have nothing to offer Nigeria as we have seen over the years. And I am afraid that so long as oil money remains the motivating factor for aspiring to lead Nigeria at the centre, so long will we continue to have a country that is not governed by any known noble principle nor will we be able to make any stride in any facet of our national development aspirations.

I am taking up this lament today because of the fierce opposition to the call for a national conference for a re-engineering of this Nigerian Project which everybody can see is not working well. Some, who are fiercely opposed to a conference of whatever name called, are afraid that it is a mere pretence for a break-up of Nigeria and that such a development would deprive them of a share of oil money which everyone in the land has become addicted to. Today, I wish that a critical mass of Nigerians will build up and wake up one fateful morning, come to an understanding of why our country is not making much progress, attribute it to the 'curse' of easy oil money , become so dissatisfied and disenchanted enough with it all and acquire the righteous indignation to say, 'to hell with oil money'. I will regard the day when this happens as the real day of our national independence, our day of liberation from indolence, small minded thinking, injustice and unfairness which have marked our slide from a once promising emerging power to one that is at the bottom of most all the indices of development in the world today. I will also see that day as one that marks the beginning of our rise to stardom. If most continue to see nothing wrong with the continuing dependence on oil, nothing will change in our country.

Our ruling elite cut a very sorry picture. They lie from both sides of their mouth pretending to be great nationalists. Some of us are not fooled by their empty posturing. All of those who express worry about Nigeria's break-up are no patriots at all. They don't care a hoot if this country breaks up were it not that there is something in it that they benefit personally from the grossly imperfect way Nigeria is today. Their real worry is that should a national conference be held derivation would be number one on the agenda and they know not how they can cope without easy oil money if there is a return to old days of 50 per cent derivation principle. And their next motivation is bitter envy and jealousy.

To be concluded nextweek

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