Rotimi Fasan
19 August 2008
column
We are again singing the same old song as government prepares the ground for yet another increase in the pump price of fuel. Removal of 'subsidy', the euphemism for making Nigerians pay through the nose for a commodity they are supposed to have in abundance, is another way of killing Nigerians by installments.
The spiraling effect of such increase in fuel price on other sectors of the economy is better imagined. Odein Ajumogobia the urbane, gentle-looking minister of state for energy, has the dirty job of bringing to Nigerians the unhappy tidings of the proposed increase in the price of fuel.
Rather than make Nigerians go through the disruptive hassles of these periodic increases in petroleum prices government would do well to go straight ahead and fix the price at whatever it considers is the 'appropriate' rate at which Nigerians should pay for the fuel they consume.
This would save us all the trauma of unnecessarily changing our way of living every few months. This time the increment is being planned as a New Year gift for the people. But for the illegitimacy baggage that the Yar'Adua government carried for the better part of its first year in office, the subsidy removal should have come much earlier.
Any such increase at that time would have further undermined the moral authority of the administration. Now that hurdle has been crossed-at least for the moment- following the favourable pronouncement by the courts of the land on the April 2007 presidential election, the government seems ready to bare its fang. And Nigerians must bear the poison with equanimity.
The statistics supportive of the subsidy removal are already flying around, with the latest being the claim that the government has lost about N500 billion, so far, this year as result of a subsidy, the government claims, serves the rich more than the millions of poor Nigerians that actually need it. The NLC is not amused by that argument and has appropriately issued warning to that effect. Nigerians on their part don't seem to be contributing much to the unfolding argument. Which is not to say that they are comfortable with the planned increment.
But theirs is the first voice that is lost in the cacophony that usually trails such verbal skirmishes between government and labour. Nigerians are used to the shenanigans of their leaders and the anomalies their country throws before them including that of going without what they have in abundance while giving away what they do not have.
Take the current scarcity of kerosene, the most widely used form of domestic fuel in Nigeria. Kerosene is a by-product of petroleum of which Nigeria is considered one of the highest producers in the world.
An oxymoron if ever there was one. But Nigeria ranks number eight on the producers roll in the world. Yet for several weeks now kerosene has been as scarce as a lion's tooth leading to impossible spikes in the price of the commodity.
Yes, Nigeria may be one of the world's highest producers of oil but like the children of cobblers who must go without shoes, Nigerians have learnt to go without oil or get it at huge costs. We groan daily in darkness, lamenting the inefficiency of PHCN but Nigeria supplies (or claims) to supply electricity to so-called brother African countries one of whom has just won at her expense a potentially oil-rich region- Bakassi.
Nigerians get deprived both by their leaders and foreigners alike of what is lawfully theirs. Deprivation has become an art in governance. We deprive one another of what is ours and constantly rob Peter to pay Paul. One only needs to look at how the politics of petroleum management has played out in the country to understand. Nigerians from whatever part of the country are so deprived of the gains of being in a country that is a major producer of fuel that they pay dearly for it- even with their lives. Foreigners have access to cheaper petroleum than Nigerians do.
But the rest of Nigerians have combined to deprive the Niger-Delta from where our petroleum is derived the right of control over this commodity. The tales of environmental abuse and degradation are there for the world to hear and see. A few years ago it used to be said that there was only one petrol station in Bayelsa one of the oil-producing states of the Niger-Delta.
The serial neglect of that region by various governments has led to a struggle no one knows where it would end except that it has thrown up another elite who corners the gain of controlling whatever concessions the Nigerian state has made to the Niger-Delta in the guise of fighting -armed or otherwise- in the name of the people. Today that 'resource control' elite has taken over the Niger-Delta and might in the end fritter away the entire gains of their struggles.
But the rest of us Nigerians must continue to insist on our right to enjoy whatever it has pleased God to put underneath or above our part of the earth. Our leaders too must realise this and must either work for the betterment of our land or lose the legitimacy to rule in the name of the people. In the interim it would not be out of place to conclude that Nigeria can do without oil 'subsidy' removal for the benefits of past removals have done us no good, not even when promises we were made to use the extra funds from such subsidy removal in providing basic infrastructure for the people.
Nigerians still travel on bad roads, go without electricity, live in badly built houses that collapse on them and get paid some of the worst salaries in the world. So far there is nothing to justify the pain that has been their lot to say nothing of increasing the pain while playing with words.
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