KACHIKWU’S MEANINGLESS ELOQUENCE

 

An inexorable connection links the tongue, action and integrity. Integrity suffers when the tongue becomes flippant and doles out fibs. Integrity suffocates when action violates expectation and embraces squalidness. Integrity is earned and it emblazons honesty. Sometimes, to sustain a hard earned integrity, it pays to keep quite or quit! This is the dilemma of Nigeria’s oil sheik, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu. To keep quiet or to quit! Politicians don’t quit their posts in Nigeria. They also do not know how to keep quiet when they should. So Kachikwu’s lot is indecision and derision, as he ambles between quietude and quitting!

Kachikwu’s appointment was one of President Muhammadu Buhari’s earliest when he got the plum job of Group Managing Director of the Nigeria National Petroleum Cooperation (NNPC) in July 2015. When Buhari eventually got roused from his millennial inactivity to appoint his cabinet, he added the portfolio of Minister of State for Petroleum to Kachikwu’s cap. Analyst after analyst recreated him as another Archimedes bound to reenact eureka and resolve the problems in the nation’s insufferably corrupt and grossly malfunctioning oil sector!

Kachikwu did come on board his job highly recommended and squeaky-clean. He was neither a politician nor an ex-public office holder. He belonged to the smug class flatteringly referred to as technocrats. But unlike many of them, Kachikwu didn’t come with his nose in the air like Ngozi Okonjo-Wahala. He sounded sincere when he spoke. His strides were brisk and purposeful. He sounded passionate and cut the picture of a patriot on a date with history. But the Nigerian factor did something to Kachikwu the way it did to the late Chief Bola Ige who promised to stabilize the power sector within six months when he presided over that sector in 1999.

Kachikwu’s eloquence in articulating his dream and mission was infectious in the beginning. Then he overreached himself and gave a deadline towards ensuring regular fuel supply and also when the nation’s refineries, four in all, will function optimally. I am sure that it was at that point, quite early in the day, that the ever shadowy Nigerian mafia, invincible and legendarily malevolent, decided to go to work. Since then nothing has added up for Kachikwu.

His case is made more pathetic since his principal boasted a great deal about the revolutionary changes he would wrought in the oil sector. So expectations were high. Kachikwu’s background as a key player in Mobil also kindled great expectations among Nigerians. This is so because the oil sector is the soul of Nigeria’s socio-economic and political existence. Oil remains the blood that irrigates Nigeria’s veins.

The erratic supply and inadequacy of petroleum products and the monumental sleaze in the oil sector has not only put Kachikwu on the spot, but has dented his integrity. Since mounting the saddle as the nation’s oil ogbuefi, Kachikwu’s pronouncements have become as impotent as a puppy’s attempt to quench a fire by farting. When there was petrol scarcity and price hike in the early months of 2016, Kachikwu confidently told Nigerians in his masterly eloquence that the problem would be resolved by April of that year. Unfortunately, April didn’t come until July and Nigerians suffered a raw deal. He gave a deadline regarding when the refineries will work. Till this day, I doubt if any of them can refine enough petrol to run the less than thirty cars in the small street where I live.

The dismantling of Kachikwu’s integrity came last year when he upbraided his successor at NNPC, Maikanti Baru for financial malfeasance in a contract award involving the mind boggling sum of twenty-five billion dollars! Poor Kachikwu! He wrote to the Presidency to complain, but he was ignored. Then the memo leaked. Nigerians thought the accused would be investigated and sanctioned, but no. In the heat of the scandal Kachikwu visited Aso Rock Villa to explain himself, but we were told he was not allowed to see the mai gida! As the saga went on, Baru, Kachukwu’s, subordinate took to insubordination and was upbeat making statements.

Kachikwu’s has been talking about the present fuel crisis which began in November last year! For the umpteenth time Kachukwu has told Nigerians that the scarcity and unbearably high pump price would end in a few days! This is February and the few days Kachikwu talked about in the November of 2017 are yet to come. His most recent integrity breach was in the news with him ordering “NNPC to end fuel crisis this week”! The same report has Kachikwu saying that Nigeria would “not be ruffled by declining crude oil price”. I am sure Kachikwu doesn’t believe himself.

Kachikwu was again at Nigeria’s international petroleum summit in Abuja this Monday. He spoke in his accustomed aplomb, but his eloquence had become meaningless. The audience made up of members of his class; technocrats, businessmen, politicians, and expectant journalists didn’t clap when Kachukwu finished speaking. They didn’t believe his perfunctory submisrsions. His eloquence has lost substance. It has become meaningless!


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