Kenya: The Man Who Will Deport A Refinery

After an obscure ex-soldier and presidential wannabe in Kenya grabbed global headlines by threatening to send the $16 billion refinery project Dangote is embarking on in his country packing as one of his first executive orders, I sprang into action. The Kenyan mission in Accra helpfully pressed some buttons, and I secured an exclusive telephone interview with the Personal Assistant to Mr. Patrick Osoi, the Kenyan ex-soldier who has vowed, upon his inauguration in February 2027, to march Dangote's $16 billion refinery back to Nigeria.

As usual, Africa’s telecommunications still leave much to be desired. The Accra-to-country +254 line was patchy, but the thinking was patchier.

PAN-AFRICAN DIGEST: Good morning. Am I speaking with the PA to the Next President of Kenya?

PA: Yes, hello! You are speaking with the Office of His Excellency-in-Waiting. Kindly state your mission.

PAD: My mission is comprehension. Your principal has promised to expel the newly launched Dangote refinery from Lamu. I want to understand the logistics. Will the refinery fly economy or business class?

PA: Hello? Hello? - You are breaking. I said His Excellency will send Dangote back to Nigeria because Kenyans can do the job ourselves!

PAD: Splendid. Name one Kenyan refinery owner.

PA: The line is, - Hello? - the line is bad. I heard "name one Kenyan restaurant.

PAD: No, sir. Refinery. A facility that turns crude oil into petrol. Not a facility that turns ugali topped with Chang’aa into presidential ambition.

PA: [pause] …Our people have the capacity. Kenya has very smart people.

PAD: Of course. But capacity isn't the question. The capital is $16 billion. Does His Excellency-in-Waiting have sixteen billion dollars?

PA: We have the will!

PAD: The will. Excellent. Will is famously accepted at international crude auctions. The Saudis take it instead of letters of credit. Now - permit me a small test of this famous Kenyan sovereignty. His Excellency is a former soldier. Good. Soldiers understand bases. Tell me: is His Excellency also planning to expel BATUK?

PA: …Batuk?

PAD: The British Army Training Unit Kenya. British soldiers, stationed on Kenyan soil, training on Kenyan land, under a treaty renewed with great ceremony while your courts were still asking what happened to Agnes Wanjiru - the young Kenyan woman an inquest found was murdered by British soldiers in 2012. For fourteen years her family has begged for justice while the suspects flew home to tea and promotions. Kenyan women around Nanyuki have told - for years, sir - of rape and assault by men whose government calls them "guests." So here is my question, and I ask it gently, the way one asks a man if he has noticed his house is on fire: His Excellency intends to expel the man who built a refinery. Does he also intend to expel the men accused of burying his country's daughters?

PA: That is - that is a different matter. That is a security arrangement between two friendly governments…

PAD: THERE it is! Did you hear yourself speaking, Sir? Did you hear the machinery of the African mind, under colonial management, grinding in reverse? A Nigerian with money is an invader to be deported from Kenya. A Briton with a rifle and a body count is a "security arrangement between friendly governments"! The man who would march sixteen billion dollars to the airport cannot find the gate for the army that marched over a woman's grave! Oh, this is rich! This is Twain's whole library distilled into one telephone call! It is easier to fool a man, Twain said, than to convince him he has been fooled - and nothing fools a man faster than an accent in a beret. The Nigerian speaks with a Nigerian accent, so he must go. The Englishman speaks with an English accent, so the well-curated Askaris in Nairobbery, oops, pardon me, Nairobi, must salute him. Sovereignty, it appears, is not the right to be free on your own soil. It is the right to choose which foreigner holds the knife.

PA: You are twisting - the British have been our partners since…

PAD: Since when, exactly? Shall we date the partnership? The Kenya Land Commission of 1933? The detention camps at Hola, where eleven men were beaten to death by the "partners" in 1959? The Mau Mau emergency, in which your own founding fathers were branded vermin? This is the partnership whose army now camps in Nanyuki - and a candidate for the presidency of sovereign Kenya has examined this entire historical buffet of humiliation and selected a refinery as his target for expulsion. The ancestors are watching, sir, and they're laughing so hard the baobab is shaking: the dog that cannot bark at the lion is barking at the goat.

PA: His Excellency stands for Kenyan dignity!

PAD: Of course, he does. He served in the neocolonial army. Sir, don’t you agree that Kenyan dignity was buried with Agnes Wanjiru, and every candidate who has thundered about Dangote while whispering about the British base has helped lay the flowers. Fanon saw you all coming. He wrote it down in 1961: the national middle class that discovers its courage only where there is no risk; patriotism as a flag it wraps around itself to keep warm; heroism aimed exclusively at targets that cannot shoot back. Expelling Dangote costs nothing. Expelling BATUK costs everything: treaties, training fees, and the approving nods of men in London clubs. Spending his energy on expelling Dangote doesn’t show His Excellency as a candidate fighting for Kenyan sovereignty. It shows a badly informed candidate, driven by his own ambition and fear.

PA: You go too far! We will respond to the BATUK issue in our policy document…

PAD: Your policy document! I can see it now, printed on the finest paper: "Chapter One — Deport Refineries. Chapter Two - [To Be Announced After Consultations with Friendly Governments]." And did you know, by the way, that Kenyans are reportedly set to own thirty percent of this refinery your candidate wants to deport? Your principal is threatening to expel his own people's inheritance while protecting the army accused of violating his own people's daughters. Which woman, sir, has Dangote buried in Lamu?

PA: [static] …percent of what?

PAD: Thirty percent of the refinery.

PA: I — the line — hello? —

PAD: The line is fine. The arithmetic, it’s the history, and the moral compass that have collapsed simultaneously. This is quite an achievement for one telephone call. Where were these Kenyan titans of industry for sixty years, sir, while Kenya imported every refined drop? Where was the sovereignty when the fuel was foreign, but the soldiers were very foreign, with boots on the ground and cases in the courts? The Nigerian built what sixty years of "capacity" could not - that is not an insult; it is a mirror. And the mirror shows a candidate who would deport the mirror and salute the smoke.

PA: His Excellency has the support of the people!

PAD: Which people? Could you name three? And do not count the echo, the embassy, or his nice beret.

PA: [long silence] …We will release the names in due course.

PAD: In due course. The eternal refuge of the paper candidate and the pending file. Meanwhile the refinery stays, the base stays, the women of Nanyuki wait, and a man in a suit practices his inauguration speech in a mirror the Nigerian financed.

PA: Hello? I — hello? — the network is bad — we will — [click]

PAD: Hello? Hello?

[The line went dead. It has since been reported that the network didn't disconnect the call, but history, which, being history, had heard this exact conversation before, in every African capital, at every election, since the flags were lowered. The new flags raised: the same brave men, the same safe enemies, the same silence over Nanyuki.]

Ọ̀dọ̀fin Fẹ́mi Akọ́mọláfẹ́ (1st Dan, Ọ̀dọ̀fin I of Kasoa)

Blog: https://femiakogun.substack.com