ALLAFRICA.COM
PREMIUM TIMES [07/03/13]
By Toyin Akinosho
Opinion
Senator Ita Enang's spirited claim at the
National Assembly Wednesday to the effect that 83% of the country's oil
block is in the hands of northerners appears to be inspired from
assertions contained in an old article by a newspaper commentator, Mr.
Ross Alabo-George whose famous essay was titled Poverty And Deprivation:
Why The North Is Poor.
In the excerpted refutation below, Toyin Akinosho, a petroleum
geologist with over two decades of work at Chevron and now publisher of
the well-regarded Africa Oil and Gas Report, argues angrily that such
lines of thought canvassed by the likes of Senator Ita Solomon Enang and
indeed Mr. Ross Alabo-George are merely hysterical, and tendentious,
designed to mislead the public. Mr. Akinosho characterizes the arguments
as crappy and crummy. It is excerpted from the African Oil+Gas Report
for the value it brings to the current debate about Nigerians oil
resources and the National Question.
Alabo-George's article plays up so well the sentiments that a good
number of Nigerians, especially middle class types excluded from the
spoils of the petroleum subsidy, and allied deliverables, nurse about
the kind of leadership we have suffered since independence.
