It is the devil’s excrement. We are drowning in the devil’s excrement
— Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso, Founder OPEC.
All in all, I wish we had discovered water
— Sheik Ahmed Yamani, Oil minister, Saudi Arabia
Ordinarily, finding a “treasure” tends to bring joy to the one who finds it. Oil discovery has become Nigeria’s developmental Achilles’ heel: in popular parlance, a resource curse. Six decades after independence, Nigeria remains one of the poorest countries in the world. It has evolved into one of the least economically diversified countries in the world because of a…
