The ding –dong between former President Olusegun Obasanjo and the NNPCL is good, disturbing as it may seem on the surface. It is a buckle-up clarion call to NNPCL. The nation has suffered enough in its hands. The argument that may be seen as degenerating into a brickbat is still over the state of the refineries.
The group chief executive officer (GCEO) of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL, Mele Kyari, announced on 30 December, 2024, that the Warri Refinery had been successfully, though partially, refurbished and was roaring back to life. The New Year gift by NNPCL to the nation took everybody by surprise, coming this soon after the old Port Harcourt refinery was reactivated and it became operational. Despite the stage of rehabilitation, it will produce 60 per cent of its installed capacity, which is 125, 000 barrels per day. GCEO Mele Kyari said with glee:
“If you see the plant you will see the reality yourself. This plant is running, we have not completed it 100 per cent, but we are on the other part of the plant as we progress, but currently this plant is running. You will see what is happening now and we are bringing products to the market.”
According to reports, Mele Kyari spoke to journalists he led on a tour of the facility in Warri, also witnessed by stakeholders. He went on: “There are many people who don’t think this is real. People don’t believe real things can happen in our country. We believe that this is right for our country and all of us have a stake, including the media so this can become a greater place as it is already happening. We want you to see that everything is real.”
Former President Obasanjo, who is not known to shrink from controversies, has thrust his chest out to count among “people who don’t think this is real”, that is, given his stature he is not perturbed if he is seen as leading the Doubting Thomases.
He was swift in expressing doubts about the health feat of the refineries. He anchored his reservations on the aphoristic parable of a farmer and the size of his farm during planting season. The farmer made the world to believe that he had a large cultivation of yams. He boasted that he planted 200 yam mounds, whereas all he had was 100 heaps. At harvest the truth will inexorably catch up with him.
“So, if anybody tells you now that they (the refineries) are working, why are they not with Aliko in the market? Aliko will make his own refinery work. Not only make it work, he will make it deliver,” Obasanjo asked sarcastically.
“Whether we announce our own government refineries are working or not working, look, it is like they say in a 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.”
In response, however, the NNPCL leadership, sure of itself, has said it would be pleased to have Obasanjo as a guest to be taken round the plants to see things for himself.
Given Obasanjo’s standing and public acclaim, it is hardly inconceivable that he would make comments without intelligence reports and without gathering information from competent sources connected with the refineries.
The former President is not the only person who harbours doubts. Some experts in the oil industry believe it must have been a miracle to succeed in bringing the refineries back to life. One said: “We watch and see.” Obasanjo hinges part of his doubts on his discussion with Shell that he had invited to take interest in running the refineries but Shell turned down the invitation.
One of the four reasons Shell gave was that there was “too much corruption around the activities of our refinery and they would not want to get involved in that.” They gave other reasons bordering on the productive capacity of the refineries Shell considered too small.
NNPCL has on its part allayed fears, saying that it has expanded beyond oil and gas to become an integrated energy company. The company went further to explain that what has taken place was not the accustomed Turn-around maintenance (TAM) but a comprehensive overhaul. It was a comprehensive overhaul designed to meet what it described as world-class standards.
And we are reminded: “Today, NNPC Limited, is a private entity that has transitioned from being a loss-making organization to becoming a profit-oriented global energy leader”, said the Chief Corporate Communications Officer of NNPCL, Olufemi Soneye.
Far back on 04 August, 2021, the Buhari Administration approved $1.48billion (US Dollars) for the rehabilitation of both Warri and Kaduna refineries, $897million for Warri and $586 million for Kaduna. For Warri in phases of first 21 months,23 months and 33 months.
There has been no widespread follow-up report assuring the public that the Warri has started to produce Premium Motor Spirit alias PMS but more well known as petrol which is the major product the generality of our people are ardently longing to have. ThisDay reported that as of the time Mele Kyari and his team were on tour of the plant the refinery was going through a “test-run of its refining processes, and Naphtha had yet to be transferred to the Fluid Catalytic Cracking (FCC) unit for production of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) or petrol or gas.”
If there are lingering doubts which former President Obasanjo and some experts in the oil industry harbour, NNPCL should see it as a burden and challenge they must quickly discharge. Indeed, the doubts must be seen as energy tonic to fasten belts and to fire them to disabuse the mind of everybody and prove the doubting Thomases wrong, and beat their chest that the two refineries, Port Harcourt producing 75 per cent of its installed capacity of 150,000 barrels a day and Warri producing at 60 per cent of 125,000 barrels, are back on stream.
Were the claims to prove Obasanjo right and end as a hoax, not after Bola Tinubu has described the development in Warri as a historic milestone, it would be the biggest scandal of the century.
If many more of modular refineries from the present five in operation out of 25 licensed firms join what promises to be the longed-for competition, then the joy of Nigerian citizens will undoubtedly be full. The President said: “The restart of the Warri refinery today brings joy and gladness to me.” So must it be –and for us all! His joy is proof of his confidence in the NNPCL and its leadership. They cannot afford to let him and the nation down.
There are two kinds of thought. They are Intuitive Thought Volition and Intellectual Thought Volition. Intuitive thought volition comes from the spirit. Intellectual thought volition comes from the intellect. Therefore, intuitive volition coming as it does from the imperishable is the more powerful and potent than the intellectual thought volition. The spirit is the master while the intellect is its tool. The spirit which produces intuitive thought volition is the highest creature in Creation.
The intellect which belongs to the body is the tool and servant of the spirit which implement the will of the spirit on earth. The body serves only as housing to the spirit. In many a person, the spirit kernel, the essence, the real man hardly knows why it exists, what it is on earth for, where it is from, for what purpose it is on earth, where it goes after the sojourn on earth. It is ignorant of the laws which govern its existence on earth and in the beyond.
By way of illustration I will say the sprit seed, germ or kernel is on earth like a mango seed sown in the soil, to germinate, grow, flower and bring forth fruits. It cannot be without meaning when it is said, “The sower goes out to sow…”The spirit seed unfolding into maturation process is to recognize the WILL of the Almighty Creator in Creation and unconditionally fulfill it, perfect its abilities and return home to Paradise. There it may be privileged to partake in the further upbuilding of Creation. Many of us are removed from this reality as human spirits. We produce intuitive thought that are contrary to the pure thought which the Laws of Creation expect of us.
How many of us are not envious or hateful, greedy, cunning or malcontent and malevolent as examples? These weaknesses may exist, feeble or dormant in our intuitive thought volition without our knowing that they do. Let us take envy and hatred as examples.
The intuitive thought volition is fashioned by a special specie of Nature Beings into intuitive thought form. If they are pure, they will purify, ennoble, beautify and upgrade us, our environment and whatever they may impact. If they are dark and ugly intuitive thought forms they will produce opposite effects. Beautiful and ugly intuitive thought forms are alive and active.
The ugly ones are the demons we always talk about. They are attached to their authors. If they are not targeted at anyone, they roam about and attract to themselves forms of their nature or homogeneity or are attracted by the ones that are stronger than they are through the osmosistic law or if you like, the Law of Osmosis.
They form communities on earth and in the beyond which some Christians call principalities. These homogeneous principalities are nourished by larger homogeneous power centres. Whenever we permit ourselves to think evil, we tune ourselves to the energy vibrations of these principalities and power centres. The energies rouse and nourish our intuitive and intellectual volitions, invigorating them and our capacity to think and to impact evil.
When we send intuitive thought of envy or hatred to anyone, this huge army will attack our target. Envy and hatred will envelope such a person, sometimes to the point of overwhelming, with all their manifestation, including murder. A pure target comes to no harm. Inevitably, the demons will attack the author of one or several of them, causing such vicissitudes of existence from which deliverance and imagined enemy is often the cause whereas the author is the cause of his or her own problems.
The unique Work, In the Light of Truth, the Grail message by Abd-ru-shin says of this: “The greater part of the responsibility naturally falls back upon the man who generated the impure thoughts and whose wish or desire sent them out to the person concerned, for the thought-forms also remain attached to their author and react upon him accordingly.
“It is therefore necessary repeatedly to call to all true seekers: ‘Give heed to the purity of your thoughts!’ Put all your energy into the effort! You can work with this like mighty warriors and pioneers for the Light, and then liberate your fellow-men from poisonous creepers that infest the world of thought-forms!”
On the other hand, beautiful intuitive thought brings us beautiful and bountiful harvests.
The forms of intellectual thought volition have no lives of their own; they are weaker and soon perish when they are not nourished by their authors. Nevertheless, they are powerful enough to destroy individuals and nations. When we are faced with challenges of existence in whatever form and we critically examine ourselves, we may discover that we have a hand or hands in what is afflicting us.
Look at this scenario: When we envy or hate someone, we are attached with spiritual binding to that person. We become like two birds figuratively speaking, tied together at the wings. Neither of us will be able to move about freely. Imagine the other person is tied to about 50 other persons on earth and in the beyond, imagine how these 50 other persons are attached to several other people who have their own threads of attachment and web, and lineages of attachment.
If one imagines oneself with an array of homogeneous number of attachments. How is one to move freely as he would like to? Since no one but oneself alone is responsible for his fate, it stands to reason that one’s salvation lies in one’s hand. And this lies only in recognizing the Will of the Almighty, our Creator, and swinging in it unconditionally, which is to love and do good at all times.
This was why the Lord Jesus warned us: “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” His eternal Word is to save us from entangling ourselves in webs of the loom of life—here and here-after that is the Beyond. These are the issues to reflect upon at the opportunity the just concluded anniversary celebration of the coming and Birth of the Lord that is Christmas offered to us all.
