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I haven’t spoken with Tinubu in five years because of his choices – Utomi
Despite being chummy with President Bola Tinubu, for many years even before he became governor of Lagos State and beyond, Pat Utomi, foremost Nigerian political economist, on Tuesday, revealed that he had not spoken to the President in the last five years, for the choice of company, he made over the years.
Utomi, Convener of the National Consultative Front (NCFront), who was also one of the founding members of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the party through which Tinubu became President, he said he decided to leave him because he did not jell with him.
“I’ve not spoken with him in five years actually. And that’s reasons for Nigeria’s current economic challenges is due to the fact that the Nigerian state was constructed by politicians not to serve the best interest of the people, but to encourage corruption.
“The truth of the matter, the naked truth, is that what is happening in Nigeria is inevitable because the Nigerian State is not constructed to serve the Nigerian people. It is constructed to be bargaining between politicians looking to share booty. Because that is what it is, you will have all this corruption,” he said.
It was also the day, Utomi, himself a former presidential hopeful, who later went to contest the governorship of his Delta State discussed the proposed working arrangement, he is putting together under the NCFront for parties like the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the Labour Party (LP), and the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP) to align as a formidable force to confront the APC in the 2027 presidential election.
Regretting that Nigeria lacked the fertile ground for growth, one of the major reasons for several multinationals to exit the country, he also cited what he described as the blatant corruption that has been displayed by Nigerian politicians and those in government.
His words: “Nigeria is not a working democracy, and part of the effort of building a strong and viable political party is to make our democracy work first and foremost, before other people begin to think about another election. The problem with Nigeria is that we’ve fought in terms of elections. We go through a mess that is called an election, we say okay, let’s wait for the next one. No, that’s not how countries grow and develop. Countries grow and develop, first of all, by founding political parties.
“I can say without any feeling of wrong that we don’t have a political party in Nigeria today. What we have managed to couple together since 1999 have been platforms for machine politics where the game is about just grabbing power rightly or wrongly and sharing spoils.”
He argued that engaging in the cycle of violent elections without properly building political parties, would not work, lamenting that over the years, the country neglected the development of the country, with the ordinary people outside the realm of power being handed the short end of the stick.
“The Nigerian people have become so frustrated, so fed up, with the nature of the way Nigerian politicians carried on, that when Peter Obi said the right things, it resonated and drove the emergence of a movement that generally got called the Obidient movement around the world, Nigerian diaspora. And if you look at the resurgence of many of the success stories of the 20th century, they had a diaspora base.
“So, the Nigerian diaspora rallied very strongly around the fact that this gentleman was saying a few things right, and a campaign like Nigeria hasn’t seen in a long time happened, and it was deliberately sabotaged, whatever you say about it. The point remains, how do you go forward when you meet this? You’ve got to realise and take advantage in trying to save Nigeria that the majority of this country is young. A significant part of our population is under 25. It is fed up, it is looking for something new, but it is also trapped. That’s the most dangerous thing about where we are. This generation is trapped in their values.”
Regarding who should lead the proposed coalition between Atiku Abubakar of the PDP, Peter Obi of the LP and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NNPP, all presidential candidates in 2023, but failed to make it, he said such a question was like putting the cart before the horse.
Hear him: “Let’s build a great party that can show the way for Nigeria. When we then build it, the people, who from the social movement that come together in addition to the political parties that come into this one truck, subscribing to certain values, subscribing to ideologies of how you make a nation happen, those people will determine who among those who seem interested can go forward.
“This is what our country does need, this is what it must have, but it should not be about some individual advertising that they are the ones who should or not. Nigerian people will determine that when the time is right. But let’s all agree that Nigeria is worth the trouble, the saving, and let those values, those strategies, those ideas, that can help us create an entrepreneurial people’s capitalism that can take us away from this elite struggle to consume the little that is coming out of oil, to a broadly growing economy.”
Fuel marketers across Abuja on Wednesday continued to sell Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), popularly known as petrol, at old prices more than 24 hours after Dangote Petroleum Refinery announced a reduction in its ex-depot price, Vanguard is reporting.
The paper reported that its investigation, showed that major retail outlets were yet to adjust their pump prices despite the N75 per litre reduction announced by the refinery on Monday.
At the retail stations visited in Abuja, the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Retail and TotalEnergies dispensed petrol at N1,335 per litre, while AA Rano sold at N1,350 per litre. AYM Shafa and Conoil outlets sold the product at N1,330 per litre.
The development comes amid growing public expectations that the reduction in Dangote Refinery’s gantry price would quickly translate into lower pump prices nationwide.
Explaining the delay, the President of the Petroleum Products Retail Outlets Owners Association of Nigeria (PETROAN), Dr. Billy Gillis-Harry, said retail prices are influenced by several factors beyond refinery gate prices.
Speaking to Channels TV, Gillis-Harry said: “Prices reflecting at the pump are dependent on availability of the product, the other is the cost. The cost of purchasing the product and cost in terms of logistics, and preparing the particular petroleum to be delivered to the people”.
According to him, downward price adjustments often take longer to reach consumers because marketers need to recover the cost of existing stock purchased at higher prices before restocking at lower rates.
When asked why increases in fuel prices are usually reflected immediately while reductions are delayed, Gillis-Harry said the dynamics of supply management play a significant role.
He explained: “It is mainly affected by whether the producer has additional resources or not at the time. Increases in prices are mainly caused by the need to restock. There must be that advantage pushing the price upward to be able to pay for new supplies.”
He further acknowledged that marketers generally seek to exhaust existing inventory before implementing lower prices.
“That’s the basic idea. But in petroleum, a mixture is involved, and loss is taken, though not in a way that affects the capital needed to restock,” he added.
Also speaking on the issue, energy analyst Olabode Sowunmi said fuel pricing in Nigeria is influenced by a combination of domestic supply arrangements and logistics costs, rather than crude oil prices alone.
He noted that although international crude oil prices remain an important factor globally, their impact on local petrol pricing is not always direct.
“Global price of crude oil is a factor internationally and not necessarily in Nigeria,” Sowunmi said.
Explaining that Dangote Refinery operates under arrangements that allow a portion of crude supply to be priced in naira, reducing the direct impact of international market fluctuations on local fuel prices, he said: “So basically the issue will have to be from the point of refinery to where it touches the final person. Logistics costs within the domestic supply chain remain a major determinant of the final pump price paid by consumers.”
Peter Obi, candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), has given assignment to Nigerians to put all those aspiring to take up political positions in the country through the grill to ascertain their level of integrity, saying it was required as a sine qua non for the job they seek.
Obi, who has been a subject of discussion in the polity since the allegation of corruption was levied against him by Kenneth Okonkwo, spokesman of his campaign in 2023, over the conduct of the party’s primaries to choose candidates for the 2027 general elections, said the grilling must start with his own person.
A guest in an interview on a podcast with Rufai Oseni, a popular television anchor, the former Governor of Anambra State, stated that it was actually for this reason that he had now sworn to see the litigation he instituted against Okonkwo through.
His take is that the Nollywood actor should use the courtrooms to give all the details of bad behaviour, following his threat to expose him fully, after alleging that he was collecting money from aspirants in the said election for electoral favours.
Hear him: “The issue of taking Kenneth Okonkwo to court wouldn’t have arisen if he had stopped at those allegations. But he claimed he still has more he would expose about me in the future. So, I am very happy to take him to court so that he can expose me publicly, alongside other Nigerians. If any of them has any criminal allegations against me, they should bring them to court.
“Not just Kenneth, everybody should now say those things they know that is bad about me or I did that is wrong because it’s good for the system, it’s good for the society,” Obi said.
“So, if you know that when we were in primary school, this man was cheating or didn’t go to the primary school, didn’t go to secondary school, didn’t do, if you know this man has done something criminal somewhere, this is time to bring it up.”
For the umpteenth time, Atiku Abubakar, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has warned about the dangerous implication of using state institutions, particularly the judiciary to destroy Nigeria’s democracy, saying it is an ill-wind that blows nobody any good.
Atiku, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), speaking on the heels of Tuesday’s verdict of the Court of Appeal, halting the de-registration order by the Federal High Court, insisted that judicial officers must not lend themselves to any act capable of undermining the nation’s democratic process.
The appellate court had ordered a stay of execution on the order made on Monday by Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court Abuja, for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister the ADC alongside four other political parties).
A totally scandalised Court of Appeal, sitting in Abuja, had taken umbrage, sparing no hard words in upbraiding the lower court judge, stating that his likes were unfit to sit on the bench.
In a unanimous ruling by a three-man panel, the court held that Lifu’s action was “the highest form of judicial impertinence”, stressing that the Supreme Court previously held that a judge who acted in such a manner.
Describing his conduct as the height of judicial rascality, the upper court, stated: “Courts are enjoined to protect their integrity. This Court has supervisory authority over the trial court.
“The decision of the lower court to proceed with the judgment despite the express order of this court is a brazen violation of the hierarchy of the court and the 1999 Constitution.
This court has the duty to invoke its powers in ensuring that its orders are obeyed. The application for a stay of execution is here yet granted. The enforcement of the judgment is stayed.”
Atiku, who hailed the position of the higher court, which restored his hope to be on the ballot as presidential candidate in the 2027 election, also noted the role of INEC as “significant.”
He said: “I welcome the Court of Appeal’s decision to stay the execution of the Federal High Court judgement seeking the deregistration of our great party, the ADC, and four other political parties. It is particularly significant that INEC itself initiated the application for the stay.
“The development reflects growing public concern over judicial contradictions and politically charged rulings within the judiciary. “Any attempt to undermine Nigeria’s hard-won democracy through judicial manipulation is a grave danger to the Republic. If our democracy suffers further injury, history will demand accountability from those entrusted with dispensing justice.
Outside ADC, Lifu’s order, also included: Action Democratic Congress (ADC), Action Peoples Party (APP), Action Alliance (AA), Accord Party (AP) and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), similarly slammed for allegedly failing to meet the constitutional requirements for continued registration and participation in elections.
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