Those who have been following the argument for and against the deregulation of the oil industry in Nigeria may have got the impression that deregulation connotes lack of control or indifference on the part of the government. But there is nothing so far from official quarters to suggest that deregulation will cause the government to relinquish its control of the oil industry because the absence of direct control does not mean that it will surrender all its rights to the entrepreneurs who may want to participate in the industry. Yet the opposition expressed so far against stems from the fear that the government would leave Nigerians at the mercy of a heartless cartel who would command the heights of the oil industry and cause pump price of fuel to rise above the means of most Nigerians.

 `As a result of such fears, many Nigerians have become resentful of deregulation and in fact the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) has threatened to ‘deregulate’ the government if it should go ahead with the deregulation plan. But Nigerians have not fared any better with the economy totally in government control. Until recently, the most important sectors of the economy were in the hands of the government. Today, the deregulation of some of these sectors has broken its monopoly and introduced healthy competition to make a little easier for Nigerians. A good example is the breaking of the stifling monopoly of Nigeria Airways. Today, the traveller is king at the domestic airports as opposed to the struggle that air travels used to be under Nigeria Airways monopoly. Before, it was almost easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for travellers to board a plane.

  Following from this, the apostles of deregulation rightly heap all the blame for the problems associated with petroleum products distribution in this country squarely on the government, which owns all the refineries and which sells fuel to local consumers through its agency, the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). In the same way, the government argues that if the current NNPC monopoly were broken with the introduction of entrepreneurs to the refining and sale of petroleum products in the country, the Nigerian people would be all the better for it. It stands to reason that once the government continues to fix maximum prices would be all the better for it. It stands to reason that once the government continues to fix maximum prices for petroleum products in this country, the deregulation of the oil sector should bring some relief to the people by ensuring that wastage, corruption and inefficiency are reduced to the minimum. Consumers will also have the last laugh because competition will result in the availability of the products at reasonable prices. This appears to be the sense in deregulation.

  We knew early in our life that the atmosphere in our home was different from that in many other homes, where husbands and wives quarrel and where was drunkenness, laziness or indifference – things we never saw in our family. We chafed and grumbled at the strictness of my father’s regime. We went to hide whenever we broke the rules too visibly. We knew, nevertheless, that our parents wanted good things for us. Some of these, such as the insistence on our going to school and never missing a day, we accepted readily enough, although, like most other children, we occasionally yielded to the temptation to play truant. However, in other cases such as their effort to keep us out of contact with the difficult life- the drinking and fighting and beer-brewing and gambling- their failure was inevitable. They could not keep us insulated. By the time we move about, we were already seeing things with eyes and judging things by the standards we had absorbed from them. .

  It was borne in on me and my brothers at a very early age that our father was an uncommon man. for one thing, in most African families, work around the home was women’s work. So we were vastly impressed by the fact that whenever my mother was away, my father could and did do all her jobs-cooking, cleaning and looking after us. We lived in this way in a community in which housework was regarded as being beneath male dignity. Even in families which, like ours, produced boy after boy-our sister came fifth-it simply meant that the mother carried a greater and greater burden of work. In our family, nevertheless; the boys did girls ‘work and my father did it with us. .

  One of the prime chores of life in the family was fetching water from the pump down the street, some two hundred metres from our door. Since the pump was not unlocked until six in the morning and there was always crowding, a system had developed whereby you got out before dawn, placed your twenty-litre tin in line, and then went home, returning latter to take your place. Often, of course, tins would be moved back in line, and others moved ahead. This could be corrected if none of these in front were too big a challenge. .

  When taps were substituted for the pumps, the first one installed was nearly a kilometre away from our house and we had to make the trek with the water tins balanced on our heads – an indignity because this was the way girls, not proud males, carried their derisive laughter. We did our jobs doggedly, that notwithstanding, because our father and mother expected it of us. Out of choice, our father did everything we did, including fetching water on occasion, and commanded us by sheer force of his example. .