 You're welcome back. Right now, we've said that the president, Ahmad Bollat-Tinibu, has been advised to go after barons responsible for bunkering. That's our second hot topic that we are going to briefly take on now. And we're glad to be joined by a political affairs analyst, Dr. Omoshallah Deji. Good morning and welcome to the program. Good morning. Thank you for having me. Okay, oil bunkering. We've been seeing news every day how oil is being bunkered and we don't know how to go about it. Salis now is telling the president to go after barons responsible for bunkering. What are your thoughts? Well, the president has to go after oil bunkers, looking at it from the perspective that Nigeria operates a mono product economy dependent on oil. What that means is that a large chunk of our resources, of our income is being earned from oil and gas mining and production. In that case, if oil bunkering is allowed to persist, definitely it's going to affect the income of the country and that has been on for decades. But government has not been able to adequately respond to it because the perpetrators, some of them are in government. Some of them are in top hierarchies in the military, in the police, in the Navy. But then the responsibility now for some government to see how the issue can be tackled holistically in such a way that the nation will not be at a loss. Why if you continue to profit from oil bunkering? But how possible is this because, okay, government go after these people and you've just mentioned that part of them or some of them are top government officials or top military officials or top people in the society that may not even be in government but they hold the strings to how government is run in a country. So what steps do you think the government can take to make sure, or the president, not just government, the president can take to make sure that these people are held accountable? But first, government must realize that PMS is an essential commodity and if PMS is expensive, definitely the poor has to find a way around it to survive. So first, making PMS as affordable as possible. I've argued that, I rightly don't buy the argument that because PMS is, because there is 12 subsidies come, then the subsidy should be outright removed. All across the world, government subsidize in one way or the other. But if Nigerian government says it is no longer going to subsidize PMS, then how do you expect the poor, like, okay, imagine the rural community, not like us, let's look at the internal, look at the economic value of some of these communities, then you ask the poor calendarizer to come and buy, well, of about 600 Naira per liter or more. So making it affordable by going after the cost of subsidies and make sure that that is meet in the board. When you go outside the cost of subsidies, then things would level up. But you don't leave the teams to be enjoying the loot that they've done, then you now pass the pain to the ordinary Nigeria. I use myself as an example. I can't think of anything that Nigeria has done for me since I was born. I can't think of anything. I stand to be corrected. So one of the rare ways of benefiting from government is by petroleum cheaply. But now that benefit has been removed from me. So going after the big guide that one to technology in Saudi Arabia, for example, there is high technology in such a way that when there is oil bunkering or you try to tamper with the oil pipeline or any form of practice at all, definitely it's going to save them at the nearest office. There's a quarter to tackle this thing, the amount of oil that is flown from one station to another has been recorded. You can't even steal anything. That is the essence of technology. So you ask yourself, what is stopping the government from embracing this technology? And what is stopping the oil multinationalists as well from embracing this technology? So if government can't embrace this technology, why not compare the oil multinationalists to make sure that adequate technology is being embraced in such a way that it makes bunkering difficult? Now another thing is standard of operations. If you compare the standard of operation in Nigeria and West African countries, where mining is taking place, compare it to the European countries, the American countries, you will see that the standard of operation is different. By that I mean, HL is exploring oil in Nigeria. The standard of operation that they will be using will be cheaper, will be less expensive than the standard of operation that they will be using in the Americas. So we have a weak government that have failed to stand up to its responsibility of enforcing adequate standard of operation in such a way that what you do in Mexico, the Americas, is what we also do in Nigeria. Another thing that government can do is ensuring the commissioning of oil facilities. I use the case of Oguni. Oguni land, that's an example. Shell stopped oil exploration in Oguni land in 1993. Since Shell stopped oil exploration in Oguni, the oil facilities there, they are still there. They are not the sustainable oil to light, as they call the professional power, the commission these facilities. So look to the commission these facilities. These facilities get old. Some of them spill oil because the company is no longer there. Some of them are accessible to oil bunkers. How do I know this? During my PhD, my research was on the oil issue in the Niger Delta and I spent months there during my data collection. So I saw it first hand, what self-spalier to decommission its oil facilities in Oguni is causing to the people. So when you fail to decommission your facilities and these facilities are readily accessible to the people you've with them, with their land, with environmental degradation, then what do you expect them to do? They have to survive. They are especially agrarian people. They rely on fishing and farming. Their land has been polluted. The water sources have been polluted. The next thing for them is for them to survive based on the oil that they can see around there. So the failure to decommission facilities is a major issue that government must tackle. Another thing that government can tackle is the easy accessibility to oil pipelines. Oil pipeline is supposed to be beneath the earth surface. But if you go to the Niger Delta in Nigeria, you will see that most of the oil pipelines are only reasonably easily accessible. You see pipelines passing through a community. Oil pipelines with a strong pressure that oil is pumping strongly every day. You will see it passing through the backyard of some people. In other words, government has allowed the oil multinationals to operate with infinity. If they have put the oil pipelines beneath the earth surface or the oil pipelines, definitely it will not be easily accessible for the bonkers to access it. But if you put oil pipelines on the earth surface in the backyard of a man that you have polluted his farm, that he can no longer fish because the rivers and water bodies in his community have been polluted. Definitely such people are going to improvise, which is for them to now find a way of how to survive via the oil that is in their community. And that is why you see that some of these citizens there are engaging oil bunkers. Oil bunkers are in two ways. The oil bunkers are being conducted by the big guys. In the sense that those that steal oil and put it into ships to sell to the Americans, you know, Dogo, Cameroon, you know, all those places, those guys operate on a large scale. Those ones, they are vessel, some of them are even being secured by Nigerian security agencies. Then you have the medium stroke small scale, which are the artisanal refiners, whereby they steal the oil and they do what they call cofire. That's the local policy. Cofire, which means the oil will be cooked on that, you know, and put it. So when it's cooked then it begins to filter. And there is a red market available for it because the local population in the Niger Delta can't afford the foreign refinery, refinery, business suits for about $600 a liter at the moment. So maybe the one that was refined through cofire. Maybe those ones will say for like, government has not removed from first off CDO. When I did my data collection there, but I guess maybe now it will say for like maybe $250 or $300. So that is quite affordable. So those medium and small scale are the ones that, you know, are owned by, you know, some of the community leaders, you know, faulting some political talks that when politics is not top at the moment, they fall back to that assistant refinery. So those big guys that bring vessels and ship to the Niger Delta and both the small and medium scale has to be tackled holistically. In other words, top the big guys, then make environmental remediation as quick as possible. Or you legalize a prisoner refinery and create agencies that would monitor their operations and pay taxes to the government. So in other words, the prisoner refinery will be accountable to the government and they will also pay taxes. But you can use only force to stop the oil bumping in the Niger Delta, which we never work, if anything is to go back. But first time experience, it won't go. Okay. Well, this is how we're going to wrap up the show this morning. But you've said a lot about how we can remedy the situation. So thank you so much, Dr. Deji, for coming on the show. Thank you. That was a political scientist, a public affairs analyst, Dr. Degi, talking to us on the show. This is how we draw the curtain on the program this morning. We'd like to thank you for your time this morning and hope that you'll join us again for the same program, same time tomorrow. Until then, my name is Nyamgul Agadji, on behalf of the entire breakfast family, saying thanks for being there.