In a 1982 diary entry for West Africa magazine, Kole Omotoso described Nigeria as a country “consuming what we do not produce and producing what we do not consume.” He argued that genuine development required “the conquest and maintenance of our own national market.” More than four decades later, the contradiction remains visible. The conquest of the national market has become the language of policy through backward integration, import substitution, and the pride of “our” refinery, however much of this still operates within structures subordinate to global capital and external market pressures. The fertilizer crisis unfolding at the Strait of Hormuz is the latest expression of this contradiction.