Fuelling Poverty

Hi.

I had a battle embedding the Fuelling Poverty documentary by Ishaya Bako to my last post and I got frustrated. I was thinking, “Is the Nigerian Government battling with me on the internet?” The Nigerian Government is now watching us! I’m still in London so I’m not part of the us yet. It was just WordPress. I don’t know what happened but I fought the embedding war and won! I didn’t want to make the last post too long so I broke it down. Just two parts. I thought I would share some things that stood out to me in the documentary.

The first is that Wole Soyinka mentioned the oil subsidy scam involving key government ministries, a state owned company and oil marketeers. This was the $7 billion dollar fraud on the Nigerian people known as the oil subsidy scheme. Nigerians were promised, once again, that they would be given oil subsidy which would keep fuel costs low and affordable. Yes,  Nigerians were given the subsidy but it was soon taken away. The price went from 65 to 141 Naira per litre which was an 115% increase. After the ten day protest, “Occupy Nigeria”, the fuel costs were reduced to 97 Naira per litre but there are talks by the Government of the fuel price being increased once again in 2o13. This subsidy scheme also involved the situation between Femi Otedola, Nigerian businessman and oil company chairman, and Farouk Lawan, the former Chairman of the House  Ad hoc Committee on Fuel Subsidy Regime. Femi Otedola alleged that the former chairman accepted a bribe of $620,000 to remove his oil companies from the subsidy regime. They both alleged things about the other but in my opinion, they are both guilty. This situation is too long for me to write about so if you want to read up on it, you can read it here. I haven’t heard anything else and neither one has been prosecuted.

To make it easier, I’m going to list the things I thought were interesting in the documentary.

The never ending talk about oil in Nigeria

Hi.

When I started this blog, I thought I would just be talking about my move to Nigeria and Law School, though I will not talk about the latter (see former post). I also decided that I would say some things about Nigeria but I did not know to what extent. I didn’t know that when I would comment on what is happening in Nigeria, I would be educating myself further. I don’t know when my passion for Nigeria began. I can remember my parents taking me to go to boarding school in Nigeria and after every term, I would be desperate to come back to England. Seeing Heathrow or Gatwick made me so happy. It was when I was about to do my final year and I was told that I was going to do it in England that I cried and fought to finish it in Nigeria. So far, my education in Nigeria is by far the best educational experience I have had ever till date. God knows I did not enjoy A-levels. 🙂