Politics & Power Quote by Olusegun Obasanjo

Obasanjo’s line does two things at once: it defends a system and distances its most visible steward from the mess it creates. By reducing the oil producer’s take to a crisp “about 16 percent,” he turns a sprawling, emotionally charged grievance into a neat accounting problem. The precision is rhetorical, not just financial: it invites the listener to stop blaming the companies (or local producers) and start seeing the state as the main actor at the cash register.

Then comes the tell: “in fairness to the government of this country they have accepted and admitted.” It’s the language of a controlled concession. Admitting the tax burden isn’t framed as wrongdoing, just as candor - a government portrayed as honest enough to own the numbers, which is a low bar in oil politics but an effective one. The subtext is reputational triage: if the government is “fair” and transparent, then outrage should cool, scrutiny should soften, and demands should reroute from structural change to minor adjustments.

Context matters. In Nigeria’s petro-state economy, “tax” often functions as a catch-all for state extraction: formal levies, revenue-sharing formulas, and the opaque pipeline of rents that fuels patronage. Obasanjo’s phrasing also sidesteps who ultimately pays. High state take can be sold as sovereignty - the nation claiming its resource wealth - while masking how little of that wealth reaches oil-bearing communities. The quote’s intent is managerial: keep legitimacy intact by admitting the imbalance, without conceding that the imbalance is the point.