Photo credit: biafra.org
In his controversial book, There Was A Country, Chinua Achebe referred to the fact that Biafrans were able to refine crude oil during the unfortunate Civil War which took place between 1967 and 1970.
Of course, the Western world was like, ‘the oil-industry technology was so complex’, that it would have taken Nigerians more than five hundred years to be able to figure it out. It is now history that the Europeans were taken to the cleaners.
In the South-South, a geopolitical zone in Nigeria, some of the ex-militants had ways of refining crude oil.
I would have thought a progressive society would have encouraged research into how all these were possible.
By the way, it’s no longer a rumour that refining oil is no more rocket science. But, to us, we’re still like a blind man who has lost his walking stick.
Why is it that it is getting to a ritual every December that petroleum products must be scarce? Why is it that we’ve not been able to overcome the terrible jinx?
And, even where the products are available, why must you and I be colluding with some economic saboteurs to be collecting a mere hundred naira from would-be buyers? We collude with them by accepting to be unduly fleeced of our hard-earned money.
I believe it’s high time we had a rethink!
121917
