There’s a plan to derail Tinubu’s petroleum industry revolution

It was a pleasant shock for me to read the National Bureau of Statistics’ report released last Monday that Nigeria’s economy grew by 3.19% in the second quarter of 2024. The growth rate was quicker than the 2.51% growth seen in the second quarter of 2023, and the 2.98% growth recorded in the first quarter of this year.

But more importantly, it also surpassed the International Monetary Fund’s forecasts that Nigeria’s economy will grow 3.1% in 2024.

The NBS said the services sector grew by  3.79% in the second quarter, contributing 58.76% of gross domestic product. Industrial output rose 3.53% while the oil sector, where the country gets its largest revenue, also expanded by 10.15%.

In the last one year, the Nigeria National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) has raised crude oil output from an average of 1.22 million barrels per day (mbpd) to 1.41mbpd

And in what amounts to an independent affirmation that the reforms are working, the United Capital Research, a firm of financial analysts, said on Wednesday that the oil sector is expected to record its first full-year growth since 2019, with a crude oil production target of two million barrels per day in 2024.

The analysts stated that they envisaged that the Nigerian economy would expand in 2024, driven by a rebound in the oil sector and slow but steady growth in the non-oil sector.

Anyone who has followed comments from Nigeria’s political opposition in the last four months will not fail to notice the energy being deployed to trash ongoing economic reforms of the President Bola Tinubu’s administration, especially in the petroleum sector.

It is noteworthy that criticisms of Tinubu’s economic policies are only coming from the country’s opportunistic political opposition which, true to its character, is always seeking for political profits even if the country will suffer loss.

The NBS report, no doubt, is at variance with the acidic, almost sadistic attacks on the economic policies of the Tinubu administration by the political opposition. The so-called criticisms from the opposition, especially those coming from Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2023 election, have fallen far below the civilized standard of constructive criticism.

Atiku doesn’t seem interested in being an opposition leader who offers alternative policy direction to that of the ruling government. He’s more eager to put down the administration to advance his own political interest.

There’s no doubt he’s fixated on becoming president of Nigeria, which to me is a legitimate aspiration.  But Atiku has shown that he’s willing to sacrifice any ideal to achieve that ambition. This is where he poses danger to Nigeria’s democracy.

At a time the current administration is embarking on unprecedented economic reforms aimed at repositioning the country, Atiku and the desperate political opposition are busy looking for how to derail those reforms so they could have a chance against the ruling party in 2027.

The Tinubu administration has initiated reforms to boost the economy, including slashing subsidies and devaluing the country’s naira currency, which have understandably raised inflation and brought some hardship to most Nigerians

But no one in the opposition is offering any practical alternatives to what the current administration is doing. Rather, they prey on public sentiments and the economic hardship being experienced by the people to push their ambitions. President Tinubu has repeatedly said the reforms embarked upon by his administration will cause immediate pains but will usher in an era of prosperity in the medium and long terms.

This, I believe, is what we are now seeing from the NBS report. It is the beginning of the prosperity to come, which the opposition fruitlessly tries to deny.  The opposition’s paranoia with bringing Tinubu down has turned the NNPCL and its CEO, Mele Kyari, into vulnerable scapegoats since they regulate the sector that is regarded as the cash cow of the government.

In the last few months, Atiku has covertly and overtly waged a relentless war of attrition against the NNPCL, portraying the company as a fumbling oil giant lacking any motivation to increase crude oil output and make its processes transparent under Tinubu.

His attack on Oando’s acquisition of the ENI/AGIP onshore assets as due to Wale Tinubu, the CEO being President Tinubu’s nephew, showed how desperate he is to rubbish the administration and compromise reforms. The Oando CEO is not a new entrant into the oil industry, having been in the sector since 1999. Wale Tinubu is a corporate and petroleum law attorney who knows his onions and doesn’t need President Tinubu to facilitate such deals for him.

In his desperation to prove his evil narrative that President Tinubu had mortgaged the country to his family, he accused the president of refusing to approve similar deals involving SEPLAT and Renaissance.

But Atiku, in the same statement, admitted that “the attempt by SEPLAT to buy Mobil’s onshore assets has continued to stall for the last three years…” Has Tinubu been president for three years?  Did Atiku bother to find out why the deal had stalled? He and others like him obviously don’t care about the facts. Their aim is just to hang any negative thing they can find on the president and stop him from succeeding in the task to reform governance.

A critical reading of all the press statements on the Tinubu administration will reveal how hollow and dishonest the political system in the country has become. They have no regard for verifiable data but rely on gossip and speculations to criticise the government. Their statements or criticism of the ruling government is devoid of intellectual rigour and holds no value beyond just painting the government in bad light.

In more civilized societies, when parties and their candidates lose elections, they prepare for the next election but offer constructive criticism of the party in power as joint stakeholders. But our own opposition politicians want the country to sink if they can’t realise their ambitions. There’s no respect for the country or leadership, and that’s why they will do anything to bring down the ruling government.

Atiku wrongly accused the House of Representatives of failing to oversight the NNPCL properly, which is the reason it wants to “mortgage the country’s national oil assets to vested interests.” Although the House had replied to him, he ought to have apologised to the NNPCL in view of recent events.

The NNPCL, a company Atiku described as opaque, last week released its 2023 Audited Financial Statement (AFS), declaring a net profit of N3.297 trillion at the close of the financial year, which ended in December 2023. NNPCL said the amount represented an increase of over N700 billion or 28 per cent compared to the 2022 profit of N2.548 trillion.

The reforms embarked upon by Kyari turned the NNPCL into a more transparent and profitable company confident enough to publish its financial statements.  Instead of the loss regularly posted in the past, NNPCL has been posting profits since 2020 when Kyari began the reforms.

From a loss position of N803 billion in 2018, the national oil company made a profit of N287 billion in 2020, and for the year ended 2021, declared a profit-after-tax (PAT)N674 billion.

The Tinubu administration is undoubtedly focused on seeing through ongoing reforms and is not losing sleep over the opposition’s plot to derail it. This is commendable.

Suleiman writes from Abuja.