“Are they what you call investors, people who have no regard for our environmental laws? Are those investors? People who are into double standard; applying different applications in other countries, applying degrading applications in Nigeria. Is that what you call investors? Please if we don’t take our destiny in our hands, we will be doomed for it.”
These were the exact words with which Hope Uzodimma, Imo State Governor assailed some of the Nigerian oil majors for engaging in double standards during their operations in Nigeria, all but saying that their exit from the country would not be missed, because they were never genuine investors in the first place.
Uzodimma, a guest of Sunday Politics, a current affairs programme on Channels Television, while reacting to the exit of some major companies from Nigeria, which has become a major phenomenon in recent months, particularly railed against oil firms like Shell, Mobil, Chevron and TotalEnergies for feasting on Nigeria over the years without much in return.
Ostensibly defending the scenario which particularly worsened during the government of President Bola Tinubu, he said it was so because the President, stopped the firms, he described as “cabals and deities” from benefiting from disparities in foreign exchange and fuel subsidy payments.
Shell, which said to have been active in Nigeria since 1937, recently announced an end to its over 50 years of operations in the onshore sector of its oil exploration and production, saying it would now concentrate offshore, a development which Uzodimma, appears to find unimpressive.
Hear him: “Let’s take the oil and gas industry for instance, is there anywhere in the world you go, and you see any filling station, you want to refill your car and you don’t see Shell, Mobil, Chevron, Total? How many of them are operating filling stations in Nigeria? Why are we isolated, and you call them real investors? Why have they taken to offshore operations, abandoning onshore operations if they are genuine?
“You go to Houston, landing Houston Airport, you see oil locations, you see vegetables planted all over there, habitable for human existence. Fly to Warri, as you are landing at Warri Airport, look at oil locations. Look at the sea, all the fishes, nothing existent, no fish there. The environment is degraded to a criminal level.”
Emphasising that companies leaving Nigeria were not investors but those who were benefiting from the cabal system, and no longer doing so, because of the seriousness of the present government to plug the holes, especially in the foreign exchange market, and petroleum subsidy, by pretending to be importing fuel when they were not importing anything.
His words: “Again, it is a blessing in disguise because the more they leave, the more opportunities the indigenous companies would have to participate. There is no rocket science. No foreign investor, who is comfortable in his country wants to leave his country and come here.
“And at the same time, the good investors who are Nigerians, who have been denied opportunities to practise and invest, they now have opportunities to do so. I think the earlier the artificial and fake investors leave, the better for Nigeria.”