Olalekan Adetayo
On Wednesday, President Muhammadu Buhari
played host to a joint delegation of the Petroleum and Natural Gas
Senior Staff Association of Nigeria and the Nigeria Union of Petroleum
and Natural Gas Workers. The President’s guests were led to the meeting
by the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Ibe Kachikwu. The
President himself is the minister in charge of that important ministry.
Whenever such meetings are held, the
Media and Publicity Unit of the Villa always comes up with press
statements on what transpired behind closed doors. State House
correspondents are also allowed to speak with leaders of such delegation
on the purpose of their visits.
The arrangement for the Wednesday
meeting was different. Before the arrival of the delegation, words came
from the President’s handlers that Kachikwu would be addressing the
press after the meeting. That clearly meant that there would not be a
press statement on the meeting.
So at the end of the meeting, the
minister led the President of PENGASSAN, Olabode Johnson and his NUPENG
counterpart, Igwe Achese, to the Briefing Room of the Council Chambers
where we were already waiting for them. It was Kachikwu who spoke first.
He talked about the issues tabled by the union leaders before the
President and the commitment Buhari made to them.
Before the interview session, a
journalist had talked about how he abandoned his car on a long fuel
queue at a filling station to rush to the Villa. On his arrival, the
first thing he did was to plug his telephone handsets and his computer
to electricity means for charging. He said he could not get fuel to run
his generator the previous night.
With most Nigerians passing through
similar or worse experience, we felt it would not be fair if the issue
of fuel scarcity was not raised with these critical stakeholders. So the
question was directed to Kachikwu. It was short and very clear, “When
will the fuel queues disappear?” The minister’s answer was also not
ambiguous. He started by saying that “One of the trainings I did not
receive is that of a magician but I am working very hard to ensure some
of these issues go away.” That alone depicted that the queues won’t go
overnight because he is not a magician.
He however did not leave us in doubt. He
later came out straight when he said, “…although I don’t want to put a
time frame I will expect that over the next two months, we should see
quite frankly a complete elimination of this.” For reporters, that
quickly struck as a good peg for the story.
I was shocked to learn later that the
Group General Manager, Group Public Affairs Division of the Nigerian
National Petroleum Corporation, Garbadeen Muhammed, issued a late night
press statement in which he insinuated that we misrepresented what
Kachikwu who doubles as the Group Managing Director of NNPC said during
the interview.
Muhammed’s statement was titled “Fuel
Scarcity to End Soon- NNPC Decries Misinterpretation of Kachikwu’s
statement on Fuel Supply.” He claimed that the corporation was doing
everything possible to end the fuel queues in most parts of the country
in “the weeks ahead.” That is being clever by half because once “the
weeks ahead” begins to roll into eight weeks, then Kachikwu’s two-month
theory is in place.
Then this, “the corporation in a
statement decried what it termed ‘misinterpretation’ of an otherwise
benign and sincere assessment of the fuel supply scenario by Dr.
Kachikwu during a brief chat with State House Correspondents at the
Presidential Villa….” Then I waited to read how the minister’s statement
was misinterpreted and I did not find any in the four-paragraph
statement. Rather, Muhammed was busy praising his boss to high heavens
for descending from his high horse to grant press interview to bloody
reporters (my words) in “keeping with the regime’s policy to be open and
sincere with Nigerians at all times.”
To start with, Muhammed was not anywhere
near where that interview was conducted. I expected that he should have
taken the pain to get a recording of what Kachikwu said in order to
ascertain whether indeed he was misrepresented.
That aside, I also expected that if the
NNPC spokesman was convinced that his boss was misrepresented, he should
have published what the minister said vis-a-vis what he was reported to
have said.
I was further taken aback when Muhammed
himself tactically confirmed that Nigerians must learn to remain with
the fuel queues for now when he concluded his statement with “While
apologising to Nigerians for the recent hardship in accessing petroleum
products, the NNPC assures (them) of normalisation of the fuel supply
and distribution system in the weeks ahead.” I want to believe that the
minister did not ask that that statement be issued because I am
convinced that he was not in any way misrepresented as Muhammed will
want Nigerians to believe.
Fear of phone bugging grips governors, ministers
Some things happened during the week that reminded me of the title of once a very popular soap opera, The rich also cry.
The incidents happened at the entrance
of the new Banquet Hall which is officially christened Presidential
Banquet Hall. That was where Buhari presided over a meeting of the
national caucus of the ruling All Progressives Congress.
First was the way the big men (there
were only about two women among them) including state governors,
ministers, former governors and former ministers formed a long queue at
the security points to be screened and their names marked on the list
before allowed in. Some of them were also made to fill a form called
Access Control into President’s Office Area.
The most interesting aspect of it was
when they were not allowed to enter the venue with their telephones.
Drama played out when some governors were stopped. They were expected to
submit their phones to the security agents and collect a tag that they
would use to retrieve them at the end of the meeting.
Many governors were skeptical about the
arrangement. A governor from the South South looked back and could not
find his Aide-De-Camp. He quickly handed over his phones to a man who he
asked to go and hand them over to his ADC. A governor from the South
West was lucky, one of his aides was still with him. He quickly handed
over the phones to him. While the governor’s aide was walking away, a
minister from the South West beckoned at him. “Mi o fe fi phones mi sile
fun awon ara ibi yi (I don’t want to leave my phones with these
folks),” he said as he handed them over to the man. The man replied,
“ooto ni (it is true),” and left with the phones.
I wondered aloud why the big men were
afraid to leave their phones with security agents and those who answered
me attributed it to the fear that their phones could be bugged.
Let us continue to do this together in
“the weeks ahead” with or without fuel queues at our filling stations
until when a “magician” will rescue us. Happy Easter celebrations.
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