OPINIONS ET AL

It was October 2013, two years had passed since I had left the family business in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to London, England to start my own oil trading company. My time in the family business, as a director in the telecoms division and upstream oil & gas company was challenging to say the least but engaging and ultimately rewarding. However, I have never felt comfortable with sitting back and getting a golden pass through life. Whilst the easy thing to do was to be a “good boy and good son” and enjoy all the luxuries of being in a family business – I decided that striking it out on my own once again was the best course of action. I’ve always loved the oil & gas business, like many other Nigerians. However, what I love about the business, particularly the exploration and production (upstream) side, was the mixture of strategy, operational capability, technical know-how, politics and business acumen which all had to be married with a gambling spirit and sheer luck to be succes

I recall Nigeria’s ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo ‘slagging off’ people who studied sociology and history. I was alarmed then, because even if he was right in his concern about the fact that these professions do not manufacture anything, and that Nigeria needs more scientists and engineers, a deeper understanding of our challenges as a country requires that we mainstream these subjects. Sociology enables people to understand other cultures and how cultures evolve; it just broadens the mind. We must acknowledge that a vast majority of Nigerians are of narrow minds and limited understanding of anything else apart from their immediate environments. Most Nigerians therefore indulge in a type of parochialism that places them and their ancestors at the top of the pile, and everyone else at the bottom. It’s no wonder the nation is contorting and cavorting today. History. Well, this one is obvious. They say history not only tells a people where they are coming from, but why they are where th