I expected former President Olusegun Obasanjo to fire back at the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) immediately after it announced the revival of the old Port Harcourt refinery on November 26, 2024.

In several interviews before that announcement, the former president had emphatically stated that the refineries cannot work anymore. He had backed up his declarations with his experience while in government, which made him decide to sell the carcasses to a team put together by businessman Aliko Dangote at the cost of $750 million. The former President said he had invited Shell to take over the refineries, and the excuses given by the multinational company convinced him that the refineries were as good as dead. His successor, late President Umaru Yar’Adua reversed the sale under pressure from the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). He refunded the amount paid by the Dangote team. With that decision, Nigeria had to go through seasons of anomie at the petroleum supply front as the refineries completely packed up.

Huge subsidies took over the scene, the NNPC and its cohorts took advantage, contractors fleeced the country of hard-earned money through endless Turn Around Maintenance (TAM) projects and the cycle of mystery expanded to a huge gulf. It was a journey that took nearly 20 years, following the total collapse of the four Nigerian refineries in Warri, Port Harcourt, and Kaduna around 2007. It was a journey that practically derailed the Nigerian economy and returned it to a debtor nation after the administration of President Obasanjo had in 2006 redressed that status by securing debt relief and paying off a chunk of the foreign debt. It was equally a journey that stressed Nigerians physically and emotionally, as the citizens went through the excruciating fuel supply crisis with deaths and untold disasters on the tow.

While it would be difficult to put figures to the exact cost Nigeria and Nigerians sustained while the refineries went moribund, it would just be safe to stick by the figures provided by the House of Representatives which said in 2023 that Nigeria had spent $25 billion fixing the refineries in the past 10 years. There were also claims that the process that started in 2021 had gulped about $3 billion. Such funds are aside from the annual salaries, allowances, pensions, and gratuities paid to workers who were left redundant in those refineries and who probably had to earn promotions, and embark on local and foreign training and tours amidst other duties!

At the time death snatched Yar’Adua from the stage, the nation was paying about N200 billion in subsidy. I recall that President Goodluck Jonathan, in 2012 originally budgeted the sum of N280 billion to cover subsidies but when it was obvious that the country would overshoot that figure, former Senate President Bukola Saraki, then a floor member in the senate, raised a motion to task the government on the plan to spend more than the budgeted funds. President Jonathan had earlier that year attempted to end the subsidy regime, which his administration claimed would free at least N1.5 trillion into the public purse. The projection was that infrastructure and social welfare would benefit tremendously, but the political opposition stalled that bid by arranging a series of street protests that engulfed many states.

However, when President Muhammadu Buhari took over on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the same leaders who had branded subsidy payment a scam jumped the bill from what Jonathan projected at N1.5 trillion to about N11 trillion. The NNPC and Buhari not only paid subsidies, but they also embarked on future oil sales as the administration resorted to resource-denominated loans and all manners of shenanigans that mortgaged the crude that was still hundreds of metres below the sea, thus throwing the nation into a huge economic mess. Even when President Bola Tinubu claimed to have removed the subsidy on May 29, 2023, there were reports the nation still paid close to N5 trillion.

So, when NNPCL announced it was breaking the ice of inefficiency by bringing back the 60,000 barrels per day capacity old Port Harcourt refinery, only its officials were excited. It had to arrange visits of different groups to convince Nigerians. In the last days of December 2024, it also announced the return to life of Warri Refinery. Despite that, the words of President Obasanjo that the refineries may never work again continued to haunt the company. I have also been part of tours of the refineries in Port Harcourt between 2012 and 2013, when the then General Managers gave assurances that everything was set to bring back the refineries in 2014. But no one heard anything positive again as power changed hands in 2015. We were only told the government had awarded another TAM in 2021.

It was obvious that officials of the NNPCL have been upbeat since the return of the 60,000 Port Harcourt refinery in November 2024. It was like the hunter who had taken the head of a lion. One the Igbos will call Ogbuagwu. However, the skepticism has continued to grow because the effects are not seen on the streets. The back and forth around the revived Port Harcourt refinery did not also help the cause of the NNPCL. One day, it claimed to have started operations, the following day, the machines were undergoing recalibration, so the long file behind Obasanjo’s affirmation ‘Can anything good come from Nazareth’ was getting longer, and yours truly was one of them.

The former president did not disappoint when he granted an interview last week and doubted the workability of the revived refineries. Obasanjo told his interviewer: “So if anybody tells you now that they (the refineries) are working, why are they not with Aliko (on the streets)? And Aliko will make his own refinery work. Not only make it work, he will make it deliver.

“Whether we announce our own government refineries are working or not working, look, it is like they say in Yoruba adage, ‘the man who plants 100 heaps of yams and says he has planted 200 heaps, they say after he has harvested 100 heaps of yam, he will also harvest 100 heaps of lies.”

The NNPCL has, however, challenged Obasanjo to join it on a tour of the refineries to see the reformation it has been able to effect. The company’s spokesman, Olufemi Soneye, said that the NNPC now has a business model that has made it a profitable organisation.

He said: “We hold President Olusegun Obasanjo in the highest regard as a respected statesman who has made significant contributions to the growth and progress of Nigeria. His dedication to national development and his right to speak on matters of national importance are both deeply respected.

“In response to his recent comments, we would like to respectfully highlight the remarkable transformation of the NNPC. Today, NNPC has evolved into NNPC Limited, a private entity that has transitioned from being a loss-making organisation to becoming a profit-oriented global energy leader.

“Under this new model, NNPC Limited has expanded beyond oil and gas to become an integrated energy company. Our focus is not only on harnessing traditional resources but also on developing cleaner, cheaper, and sustainable energy solutions to meet Nigeria’s growing demands.”

While we wait to see whether President Obasanjo would take up the challenge to embark on a tour of the refineries, the words of the elder statesman will not stop ringing in the ears-a farmer who plants 100 heaps of yam but claims to have planted 200 heaps, will, after harvesting the 100 heaps of yam, also harvest 100 heaps of lies!

The NNPCL, according to Soneye, said it has returned to the path of profitability. But President Bola Tinubu just told the nation weeks ago that he has been meeting his obligations without recourse to the NNPCL and ‘Ways and Means’. So if the NNPCL’s profits are not contributing to the nation’s wealth, where is the evidence of that profitability? Are we not being returned to Obasanjo’s proverbial farmer, who will have to harvest his 100 heaps of lies? Or is NNPCL’s money toxic, or is it like the gifts by Esu Odara in Yoruba tradition, which gives to the adherents with the right hand and takes back in multiples with the left?

Only a move away from the usually opaque operational system of the oil giant, NNPC, with or without the ‘L’ can solve that riddle.

On Monday and Tuesday last week, workers and political operatives within the precincts of the new Senate building in the National Assembly complex, Abuja, were treated to a replica of the Theatre of the Absurd. This type of drama originated in Europe and later spread to America in the 1950s. It was influenced by existential philosophy and Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus.

In that work, Camus captured the fundamental human needs and compared the absurdity of man’s life with the situation a figure of Greek mythology, Sisyphus found himself, where he was condemned to repeat forever the task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, and repeatedly sees the same roll down the hill as he approaches the top.

He, thereafter, juxtaposed life’s absurdities with what he called the “unreasonable silence” of the universe to human needs and concluded that rather than adopt suicide, in frustration, “revolt” was required.

82-year-old Dr. Muhammed Adamu Fika, former Clerk to the National Assembly and former Chairman, of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), who calls himself the “smaller Adamu Fika,” must have come across the Camus essay in deciding to lead an emergency meeting of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries of the National Assembly on November 18. The emergency meeting, which was jointly held with members of the Association of Retired Staff of the National Assembly was meant to salvage the pathetic plights of the National Assembly retirees.

Eighty-two-year-old Fika can hardly gather the pace to navigate round the corners of the National Assembly, but he insisted on making the trip to enable him to preside over the meeting as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries. As his retiree colleagues, many of whom are far younger, saw him struggling to walk the required distance from the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Library, originally fixed as venue to the new Senate building, they had to provide some shoulders to lean on. At one stage, an office chair was converted to a wheelchair to ensure the elderly Fika got to certain locations. It was a sad tale, especially if you look at the essence of Fika’s trip to the National Assembly. He was there to preside over a meeting to press home the need for the payment of the entitlements of National Assembly retirees. An alarm had earlier been sounded on the different Whatsapp platforms of the retired workers of the National Assembly to the effect their members were dying in numbers. It was revealed that no fewer than 20 retired workers had died awaiting the payment of their entitlements in the recent past. Another set of retirees numbering 12 were said to have been bedridden in different hospitals across the land. That alarm was more than enough to prompt Fika and his retiree colleagues to an emergency meeting. But the sight of an elderly man, fighting a just cause on an improvised wheelchair was more than absurd.

Payment of the entitlements got stalled after former President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which mandated the National Pensions Commission (PENCOM) to hand over assets of the staff of the National Assembly in its custody after the passage of the National Assembly pension law.

In the beginning, there were no signs that things would go south on the implementation of the Act. Three months after the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act came into effect, PENCOM had written the management to convey its decision to hand off the pension assets of the staff of the National Assembly, while requesting the National Assembly management to provide it with account details to remit the accrued funds. The 10th Senate and the House of Representatives also provided hope for the retirees by providing a take-off grant to the tune of N2.5 billion in the 2024 budget. However, the NASS management could not comply with the request from PENCOM because the Pensions Board had not been inaugurated. Months after months, the retirees waited. Those who were already enjoying their benefits when PENCOM was administering had the payments terminated, while the waiting game ensued.

In trying to fast-track the implementation of the Act, Fika, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries had forwarded a letter to the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, intimating them of the council’s recommendations for positions in the National Assembly Service Pensions Board.

Fika said in the letter, dated February 27, 2024, that “Considering the pathetic health conditions of our retired colleagues, Your Excellency will agree with me that the establishment of the National Assembly Pensions Board is overdue five (5) months after Mr. President’s assent.” He said that his letter was premised on the provisions of Sections 2 and 17(3) of the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which indicate that the presiding officers of the National Assembly shall make the appointments subject to recommendations of the Council of Clerks and Secretaries. But some persons are insinuating that the undue delay might have been instigated by two strange bedfellows-politics and money. Where the two are involved, simply things hardly follow a straight course. However, nothing justifies the nearly 20-month delay in inaugurating the Pensions Board.

At the end of the emergency meeting on Monday, further meetings were said to have been scheduled at the instance of the Senate President, Akpabio, his deputy, Jibril Barau and others but there were no conclusive steps, yet.

A communique released after the meeting indicated that the retirees observed that the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023 went through full legislative process in the 9th National Assembly and was assented to by President Muhammad Buhari. It further noted that the delay in implementing the Act has caused undue and untold hardship to the retirees who are unable to access their retirement benefits, adding that while a number of the retired Staff have died, many others are bedridden due to sufferings occasioned by the non-payment of their entitlements.

According to the communique, the meeting decried the pains the retired staff have been subjected to and recalled that appropriate recommendations as per the composition of the Pensions Board have been made to the Presiding Officers of the National Assembly, in line with the enabling Act.

Like every lover of Yoruba traditional music, language and culture, I have of recent been inundated with requests to lend a voice to the newest raging fire in the Fuji music genre. Since the passage of Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Balogun, popularly known as Ayinde Barrister or Agbajelola Barusati, there have been longstanding tiffs on whom of the trio of Ayinde Omogbolahan Anifowose, KWAM 1; self-named King Saheed Osupa (K.S.O.) and Wasiu Alabi Pasuma, was the “King.”

These musicians’ recent quest for supremacy is not new. From time immemorial, supremacy battles have been part and parcel of Yoruba music. Apparently now tempered by modernity, in the olden days, the battles were fought with traditional spells, incantations and talisman aimed at deconstructing and liquidating their rivals. Mostly fought on genre basis, I submit that pre and post-independence entertainment scene would have been livelier, far more robust than it was but for the acrimonious liquidating fights of those eras.

In the Sakara music, Abibu Oluwa, a revered early precursor of this Yoruba musical genre, who reigned in the late 1920s and 1930s, had Salami Alabi Balogun, popularly known as Lefty Salami, Baba Mukaila and Yusuff Olatunji as members of his band. Oluwa praise-sang many Lagos elites of his time, especially Herbert Macaulay to whom he sang his praise in the famous track named “Macaulay Macaulay.” In it, he sang the foremost Nigerian nationalist’s alias of Ejonigboro – Snake on the Street and prayed that he would not come to shame.

Sakara also produced the likes of S. Aka Baba Wahidi, Kelani Yesufu (alias Kelly). It was sung with traditional Yoruba instruments like the solemn-sounding goje violin whose history is traced to the north, and the roundish Sakara drum, beaten with stick and whose appearance is like that of a tambourine. Sakara music is often called the Yoruba variant of western blues music because of its brooding rhythm though laced with a high dosage of philosophy.

When Oluwa died in 1964, he literally handed over to Lefty who, born on October 1913, died December 29, 1981. Lefty, a talking drummer under Oluwa, churned out over 35 records before his demise, one of which was a tribute to Lagos monarch, Oba Adele (Adele l’awa nfe – Oba Adele is the king we want) and another to the Elegushi family. I dwelt considerably on Sakara because it is believed to have had considerable influence on other genres of traditional African Yoruba music, especially Apala and Fuji, with the former sometimes indistinguishable from Sakara.

Apala music, whose exponent is said to be Haruna Ishola, originated in the late 1930s Nigeria. Delivered with musical instruments like a rattle (Sekere) thumb piano, (agidigbo) drums called Iya Ilu and Omele, a bell (agogo) and two or three talking drums, Apala and Sakara are the most complex of these genres of traditional Yoruba music, due to their infusion of philosophy, incantations and dense Yoruba language into their mix. Distinct, older and more difficult in mastery than Fuji music which is considered to be comparatively easy to sing, Ayinla Omowura, Ligali Mukaiba, Kasumu Adio, and many others were Apala leading lights of the time. The three genres have very dense Islamic background.

The latest entrant of all the three genres is Fuji. Pioneered by Ayinde Barrister no doubt, for an Apala musician biographer like me, I am confused that Omowura, as far back as early 1970s, asked listeners in need of good Fuji music to come learn from him – “Fuji t’o dara, e wa ko l’owo egbe wa…” Sorry, I digressed.

While KWAM 1 emerged with his Talazo music from the ashes of his being a music instrument arranger for Barrister’s musical organization in the early 1980s, the feud in the house after Barrister’s death erupted when narratives allegedly oozed unto the musical scene that KWAM 1 referred to himself as the creator of Fuji music. He however promptly denied the claim. For decades, Osupa and Pasuma were locked in horns over supremacy of the Fuji music genre. In August 2023, the two however seemed to have decided to thaw their feud as they shared stage with Wasiu Ayinde, at Ahmad Alawiye Folawiyo, an Islamic singer’s 50th birthday celebration in Lagos. KWAM 1 glibly acted as their senior colleague at the event.

As an indication that they are no bastards of the teething and recurrent supremacy battles that emblemize traditional Yoruba music, the three Fuji music icons seem to have gone into the trenches again. It first started with Taiye Currency, an Ibadan-based alter-ego of Pasuma picking a fight with the musician who self-styled himself Son of Anobi Muhammed’s Wife. In a viral video, Currency had disclaimed reference to Pasuma as his “father” in the music industry. In another video not long after, KWAM 1, like some kind of father figure, was shown asking Currency to apologize to Pasuma.

A few days ago, a video of Osupa went viral. Therein, he was chastising a particular hypocrite he called “Onirikimo” and “alabosi”, who is “stingy and is ready to shamelessly collect money from those under him.” Osupa also claimed that this “shameless elder” had strung a ring of corn round his waist and should be ready to be made fun of by hens. Watchers of the endless tiffs among these Fuji icons swear that KWAM 1 was the unnamed Fuji musician Osupa was casting aspersion on.

The trio of Sakara, Apala and Fuji music also witnessed such petty squabbles. While many claim that the fights were promotional gambits aimed at having their fans salivate for their hate-laced musical attacks against one another, some others claim that the rivalries were genuine. In the Apala music scene, Haruna Ishola and Kasumu Adio fought each other to the nadir, with Adio, who sang almost in the same voice and cadence as Ishola, suddenly vamoosing from the musical scene. Rumours and speculations had it then that a mysterious goat bit Adio and rendered him useless. While Ayinla Omowura also fought Fatai Olowonyo, Fatai Ayilara, among others in the Apala genre, the duo of Yusuff Olatunji and S. Aka also feuded till their last days. This is not to mention the interminable fight between Kollington Ayinla and Barrister.

If the tiff between the trio of KWAM 1, Osupa and Pasuma is about age and Yoruba traditional respect for elders, KWAM 1 would easily go away with the trophy of the best of the three. However, if philosophical depth, musical elan, research of lyrics and deployment of Yoruba language are at issue, none of the other two musicians can unbuckle Osupa’s sandals. Osupa began his musical career in 1983 as a teenager and has gone through the mills, his late father being a musician, too and Awurebe music lord, Dauda Epo Akara’s musical contemporary.

Unlike their predecessors, the three Fuji musicians are literate and should thus address their musical issues in more mature manner. Osupa even recently bagged a degree from the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. One thing they should know is that, whether one is supreme to the other or not, their fans will readily queue behind the brand that delights them.