Nigeria's Oil and Gas Sector: Between New Realities and Opportunities

Olusesan

Oil and Gas are Nigeria’s economic cash cows. The commodities account for about 80% of Nigeria’s external earnings and form a substantial 60-70% of her Gross Domestic Product, GDP. The huge deposit of these resources in the bosom of Nigeria’s soil and the nation near monolithic exploration of oil and gas for economic growth and sustainability, have crooned Nigeria’s economy has an oil-dependent.

Besides her size and projected population explosion of 200 million people in the next two decades; Nigeria is an irresistible global bride because of the huge deposits of oil and gas resources covered by her earth and the essentiality of oil and gas in the global economic marketplace. This essentiality and the quest to rule the world from resources accruable from oil and gas explain the various scales of crises on the global space, especially in the Middle-Eastern nations. The brewing crisis on the Bakassi Peninsular is also metaphoric of what nations can do for the black gold. 

Engaging Nigeria’s Real Estate for Global Investment: Matters Arising.

 Three weeks ago, I published an article on this column “Nigeria’s Real Estate: Between Projections and Realities” on www.3investonline.com. The article was a half year review of the Nigeria’s Real Estate Sector; and I concluded in that report that the year under review has been befogged with too many turnings without a movement.

This endemic attitude of ‘talking the work’ has not only mitigated significant progress in the sector; it has aversely midwived a gloom of apathy which industry players are struggling to diffuse in other to reposition the sector in the economic scheme of things.

In spite of the moribund state of the industry, the truth remains it still remains a virile solution to Nigeria’s economic and employment conundrum. The big question therefore is what efforts are too much to unlock a sector which every pundit agrees has immeasurable potentials to significantly drive the nation’s GDP, create employment for the army of unemployed youths and generates wealth for the people?

Of Jonathan and The E- Presidency.

By Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

An eye that will last a life time does not emit cataract at infancy – Yoruba Proverb

I simply don’t understand this noise about the absence of Mr. President and his ‘diplomatic’ duties at Rio, Brazil. Why should anyone care about his where about? Why do we make Mr. President feel we miss him? We do not, at least I don’t: except the condolence messages came a little late and I certainly miss the rage that runs through me when he makes those unintelligible statements; knowing well that he knows he does not mean the promises.   

Seriously, Nigerians should not be those who border about Jonathan’s where about. It should be his cohorts. His presence at home makes no significant difference, except that the condolence messages may be spot on. So who cares if he begins a world tour from Brazil?

The End of The End

Abstract:  This is an article I read late last year. Never mind the currency, just look at the dialectics and situate with with the current Nigerian context. Something has to be done, and done fast!  

By Femi Adesina

 Nigeria has had many beginnings of the end. The 1966 pogrom. The Biafran Civil War, which lasted for three years. Religious and ethnic riots across the country. The crises that attended the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election. OPC/Hausa clashes, in Sagamu, in Lagos. Endless Jos killings. Retaliatory bloodletting. Sharia riots. The Niger Delta uprising. Many more. No country ever lived more dangerously. But somehow, we always manage to pull back from the brink, before the final, fatal crash. We have been like a cat with nine lives.

 We tempt fate sorely, and get away with it. But now, we seem to have used up all our luck, and we’re on borrowed time. Daily Sun columnist, Okey Ndibe, says, “Nigeria is a dying idea.” But I say the situation is worse. Nigeria is a dead idea. In a manner of speaking, Nigeria is dead, all that is left is to sing the Nunc Dimittis. 

Nigeria had been dying for long, but last Sunday, it took its last breath. America had predicted the eventuality for 2015. But it came last Christmas Day, ironically on a Sunday, the day of resurrection.

Shall We Now Not beg for our lives? (2)

By: Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

I struggle each day to agree that this nation is a not failed state. I hate to think our democracy is “A Clueless Government; run by Boko Haram, for the poor people”. I sorrow at the thought that Nigeria; the ‘giant’ of Africa, now appears big for nothing in global perspective. I cannot but agree that life in this country is now brutish, nasty and short; and the only hope is Ola Rotimi’s “Hope of the Living Dead”? 

Yoruba says; “if your mother’s concubine is powerful than your father, you must call him daddy”. This is the ugly reality in Nigeria today. If Boko Haram is bigger, powerful and more ambitious than our government; then, shall we now not beg for our lives?

Today, Nigerians are like the proverbial monkey who strives not to be shamed; and once we are disgraced; we should strive not to die. If we strive not to be shamed as a people, and Boko Haram has made us dance naked in the market: shall we now beg not to die?

For me, all hopes that this government will save us are lost, all their options are exhausted and the government is ran, de facto, from the jungles of the northern states. If you think I’m cynical, have you heard the president speak lately? Did you hear him resolve to Psalm 91 as the panacea out of this national harvest of death? I am not against prayers, but I know even King David, the Psalmist, did not write Psalm 91 as a miraculous wand of protection.

NATIONAL WAR MUSEUM: Lest We Forget

Air Force Outside Gallery: Relic of one of the air crafts during the war. Below it is the famous Biafran Baby, according to the curator, that 'bird' almost changed the course of the war in favour of Biafra.

Its brown rusted roofs, punctuated by few corrugated aluminium roofs, are washed each morning by the rain of dews. The ray of sun that sweeps the city at midday wrings wild fragrances from its towering bushes. And at night, the castanet music of the crickets, the croaking symphony of the frogs and the beautiful glimmers from the fire-flies lull its inhabitants to sleep. This is Ebite –Amafor, the countryside in Umuahia, Abia state that houses the National War Museum.

If you were not around during the civil war, you might never be able to imagine the horrendous effects of a war that tore the fabrics of this nation to shreds. This is because those who wrote it in the textbooks and those telling the stories can hardly capture the true picture with mere words.

The closest attempt to represent the Nigeria’s Civil War in print is the work of the award-winning Chimanmanda Adiche in her Half of a Yellow Sun. But the poor reading culture has damaging impact on Adiche’s efforts to document history in fiction. Hence, we all forget in a hurry.

3 Days of National Mourning, Flag Flying at Half Mast ... So, What?

Flags at the Presidential Villa yesterday. Photo: NAN

     “The death that kills one’s peer is only being proverbial to one” – Yoruba Proverb

By: Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

I most certainly value human lives. I most definitely understand that the grieve of the bereaved is better imagined than experience. My heart still breaks, it still bleeds at the thought of beautiful lives, promising future; the dreams of fellow Nigerians (and some expatriates) that were avoidably aborted on the flight to death last Sunday. The sight of the scenes still cuts my heart so poignantly.

But forgive me if this sounds callous and inhuman to you: I done no mourning! Even though I saw several flags at half mast; in my mind, I hoist them to fly full mast like every other day. Yes! Please tell the president I rebelled in my mind.

History of Air Crashed In Nigeria - DANA Crash was a Disaster waiting to Happen

This is not the first time an air mishap has claimed a large number of people. The history of air mishaps in Nigeria shows that:

1.       November 20, 1969 – Nigeria Airways BAC VC10 crashes on landing killing 87 on board.

2.       January 22, 1973 – Royal Jordanian Airlines flight 707 carrying 171 Nigerian Muslims returning from Mecca and 5 crewmen died in crash in Kano, Nigeria.

3.       March 1, 1978 – Nigeria Airways F28-1000 crashes in Kano killing 16.

Unilag Olodo Vs ASS HOLE ROCK Fisher Man: Who will be the MALU?

By: Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

The fact that I renamed you guys MALU doesn’t warrant you all act like animals. You are constituting nuisance and rubbishing our image in the international circle. I paid heavily with the tax payers’ money to appear on Vogue Magazine just last month.

With due respect sir, we are not cows. Cows would have swallowed your bitter pill hook, line and sinker. OccupyUnilag!

Ha ha ha! The only place where human beings live is in this rock. That is why we don’t die like cows when Boko Haram strikes. All of you outside the rock act like cows and die like cows. That’s why I have to treat you like cows. Did you forget how I sent your brothers in uniform after you in January when you refuse to leave the streets? How I told you it is N97 or I’ll send Boko Haram after you?

Of Cassava Bread, Agege Bread and the Transformation Agenda.

By Olusesan Ogunyooye (@sesansoulmate)

Ma’am, are you aware we have refuted claims that Cassava Bread is unhealthy for diabetic patients?

How does that concerns me? I am not diabetes and I am not eat cassava bread. I see it only on News papers and TV when they pose with it at the Federal Executive Council meetings. I also remember that Joe once said he has changed his menu to cassava bread. Well, maybe he now eats out.

Do you mean you don’t serve him cassava bread?

Ask your head.

WHO IS KILLING MASS HOUSING IN NIGERIA?

Housing deficit in Nigeria is being put at between 12 to 18 million. This perennial shortage witnessed today has bloated over the years due to increasing population, rural-urban migration, unemployment and inaccessibility to reasonable funds for developers and buyers; and of course, insufficient and skewed government policies. Professionals and government alike have identified these problems, proposed solutions and maps out, almost on daily basis, intervention programmes and advocacy fora. But in all these, all we see are many turnings without a movement. Olusesan Ogunyooye takes a look at the challenges of mass housing in Nigeria; and writes...

The Tongue of a Shattered S-K-Y: A Realist’s Poetic Fantasy.

By: Olusesan Ogunyooye

The decadence in the polity, the rot in the politics and the rusty image of Nigeria in global perception form revolutionary concerns of Tosin Gbogi in “Tongue of a Shattered S-K-Y”.

Though it is commonplace to hear that “the worst democracy is better than the best military rule”, I agree. But the truth remains that under the current political dispensation, Nigerians do sometimes, silently cry for the return of the khaki ‘boys’.