Nigeria, Dec. 22 -- I was going to launch a campaign for President Tinubu to sack the minister of petroleum until I remembered that the petroleum portfolio is firmly under the belt of the selfsame Excellency to whom I was going to direct my appeal.

There had been too much opaqueness and too many befuddling- obviously unpatriotic- decisions taken by the regulators of the oil industry in the recent past. All the government-owned refineries had been deliberately sabotaged over the years, with billions of dollars flushed down the drain under the guise of turnaround maintenance. Nigeria became a net importer of refined petroleum products until Dangote Refinery came on board.

And then, the so-called Nigerian factor set in. Middlemen who had b...