BURNING MODULAR REFINERIES, ANY WISDOM? 

Source: Dr. Tosin Akindele

I am utterly dismayed each time I watch Nigerian television or listen to Nigerian radio and I am regaled with news of the Nigerian Navy burning thousans of modular refineries in the Niger Delta.

As crude oil is mined from the Niger delta and as amounts declared do not correlate with amounts extracted, the rightful owners of this resource have developed ingenious methods of "stealing" their own properties through self-designed mining and refining techniques!

It is infuriating to see "your" resources plundered by an apparition of a nation whose rulers are given to wanton theft, despoliation and neglect of the lands, the waters and the people whose resources are brazenly pilfered by an unpretentious army of occupation.

It becomes more annoying when the creative efforts of these people are so frustrated by reckless bombing...by a regime bereft of any ideas other than stealing the commonwealth and stifling voices of dissent.

Common sense should dictate that such producers and their products be provided ample leeway for research and development especially in a country where scarce foreign exchange is eternally gobbled up by perpetual importation of petroleum products! The fixation of this nation on exporting raw crude and not value added refined products is a sure pointer to the cluelessness, the wickedness and recklessness of the thugs this nation is so unfortunate to be ruled by!

The brazen opposition of the northerners to resource control borne out of contempt for total restructuring of the nation can only confirm the weird determination of northerners to sustain the suppression of Niger deltans ad infinitum!

Setting up another division of the Nigerian Army in the Niger delta further confirms the mindset of these people whose feudal system and ranka dede way of life has made northern Nigeria a back bencher in all conceivable indices of human development in spite of the humongous amounts of resources so ungodly coenerned by its rulers-in-thief!

Surely, the north is dragging the country back.
The rest of this nation wants to move on!
Dr Tosin Akindele is a medical practitioner and public affairs analyst.