
The richest Black person in the world recently made very important revelations about Africa’s energy sector and industrialization thereof during his back-to-back appearances at the African CEO Forum in Kigali and at the African Import and Export Bank annual meetings gathering in the Bahamas.
His comments came on the back of a question asked about the challenges faced during his completion and commencement of the world’s biggest single-train oil refinery in which the Africa Import and Export Bank was instrumental in lending more than 2 billion to the tycoon.
Strangely, he mentioned how international banks, meaning Western-led financial institutions were studiously working behind the scenes to make sure the oil refinery’s completion fails.
When it did not fail, their sister refined-oil importers and international oil companies operating in Nigeria sought to deny Dangote access to crude oil, this has been evidenced in his importation of poor quality high-Sulphur crude from the United States of America known as Western Texas Intermediate (WTI).
These Western corporations seek to sell the widely desired Nigerian low-sulfur light crude oil to the international Market but even more sinister, is to stop the Dangote Refinery from functioning just like it has happened with the 4 state-owned refineries in Nigeria in which more than USD10 billion has been sunk to no good coming out of them.
Dangote’s challenges in the construction and building of the USD 20 billion, 650,000 BPD (barrels per day) oil refinery point to key issues in the African political and economic spheres.
Important to note is that the government of Nigeria’s failure to supply the required oil to Dangote Oil refinery points to its dysfunctionality and calls into question its status as a sovereign state, it paints a picture of a country that is not sovereign but has long forfeited its sovereignty to multinational companies who control the most important resource in Nigeria that is oil.
It is a resource that has made Middle Eastern countries filthy rich, but in Africa, instead of making Africans rich as well, it is now making Americans and Europeans rich under the watch of the Nigerian political class who are content to supervise this process because they get their share of loot from the oil companies like British Royal Dutch Shell, American Exxon Mobile, American Chevron Texaco, French TotalEnergies, British Petroleum, and others who have been tearing the Nigerian state into pieces for the last 70 years.
On the other hand, this picture of a country and government that can not force the international oil companies to supply a domestic processor on account of national security confirms Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s 1960s observation about independent African states, the fact that they are not viable and strong enough to protect to continent’s resources, later on, to take care of the interests of the African people. This much more urgently calls for a unified African Government to take on this task.
The happenings in Nigeria have further unmasked the intertwined collaboration and relationship between the ruling class in Nigeria and the international oil companies, on the one hand, the international oil companies take the crude and face no consequences within a so-called sovereign state that is Nigeria, on the other hand the ruling class adamantly continues to import dirty fuels into the country as they export their share of crude oil to continue business as usual so they can maintain their corrupt earnings regardless of the new Dangote refinery meant to benefit the country.
If functional at full Capacity, all of Nigeria’s four state-owned refineries have a full capacity of 450,000 BPD, if added to Dangote’s oil refinery of 650,000 BPD, it precisely sums up to 1,000,000 BPD of refined products.
According to statista.com, Africa consumes a daily 4,400,000 BPD of refined products of which 1,730,000 BPD is distillates which include diesel, Jet Fuel kerosene, etc., and 1,230,000 BPD is gasoline.
Even when operating at full capacity, Nigeria’s refineries have no capacity to meet Africa’s daily energy needs. Nevertheless, operating at full capacity Nigeria’s oil refineries should meet a reasonable amount of the continent’s daily energy needs.
The challenges facing the country are very much neocolonial in nature where inefficiency is introduced into a society so neocolonial forces can continue to benefit from this chaos, this emanates from forcing a dysfunctional political system onto the people so the politicians can serve the interests of the colonial countries at the expense of their own people.
Yet ran well, the resources of the country should be able to feed everyone, make everyone rich and leave no one behind.
Nigeria and Africa as a whole have to be liberated from this dysfunctional system that has left nothing but polluted lands, poverty, and weak states vulnerable to neocolonial manipulation. A new approach necessary for the total overthrow of Whiteman’s political system is called for in our generation to bring sanity to the continent.
This requires deliberate organization and the youth taking matters into our hands for the liberation of the next generations of Africans that is our children and grandchildren from the unquenchable neocolonial thirst for Africa’s resources.
It is the only political organization leading to the overthrowing of the existing order and its replacement with a Unified African Government that will deliver the continent and its resources back into the hands of the African People.
Kwame Gonza is a PanAfrican member of the African Continental Unity Party, a Mechanical Engineer, a geopolitical analyst, and the architect of the African Railway Triangle Network Master Plan.
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