Since the sudden introduction of N141 per litre as price for the premium motor spirit (PMS), better known as petrol, as against the N65 it sold for on New Year's Eve, Nigeria has virtually ground to a halt.

Expectedly, organised labour and the civil society organisations (LASCO) called a strike on January 9 to protest the removal of subsidy hitherto enjoyed by the people. The move has attracted condemnation by statesmen and former leaders who described it as an ambush, ill-timed and insensitive.

Tagged the Big Protest, the whirlwind of street protest has raged on like bushfire in harmattan and pitted the governed against their governors and government. However, the incipience of the nationwide protest over the removal of oil subsidy this time reveals a distinctively different variant from the others before it.

Reminiscent of a mass revolt, its content and character show unanimity of purpose across all segments of the society. Except those in the executive arm and their acolytes, those on the streets are people who have eschewed various divisive tendencies of the past to say government needs to re-think the policy.

The configuration of protesters defies ethnic, religious, class, regional and such divisive tendencies of the past. Like never before imams, pastors and herbalists, artisans, the professional leagues, traditional rulers, musicians, unemployed youths, the disabled, and the aged coalesce to ask for reversal to status quo before government prepares the people's mind for the challenges of a deregulated oil sector.

This ordinarily should impel the government a need to re-think the method, strategy and timing of the fuel subsidy removal. Interestingly, the debates from both sides have been hair-raising.

The arguments are scientific too. We applaud the essence of such debate, but not when it heats up the polity this much. While the government churns out cold economic indices to justify the removal by saying the over N1.3 trillion expended on the subsidy last year was a misnomer, LASCO insists it was a consequence of corruption and the lame fight against graft by government.

Indeed, the wastage could have been deployed to the provision of infrastructural facilities such as roads, mass transportation, health, education and electricity supply. Government wants Nigerians to endure the hardship in the short run for the long term benefits accruable from the withdrawal of the subsidy.

It has already empanelled two committees to negotiate a buy-in from LASCO, headed by former Chief Justice of Nigeria Alfa Belgore and another headed by former envoy to the United Kingdom, Dr Christopher Kolade, to explain its programme for the future, through what is now famously known as the SURE document, the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment programme in furtherance of the transformation agenda.

But LASCO deplored the attempt to hoodwink them into a done deal. Plausible as the argument of the FG may sound, LASCO contends that it was morally crude to foist a new price regime on New Year's Day. LASCO would also not fathom why the corruption that had crept into subsidy implementation should be passed on to the masses to bear. The FG, it assert, pulled a fast one by claiming it was still consulting stakeholders.

Notwithstanding the debilitating effects of the current impasse, we commend LASCO's creativity, orderliness, focus and articulation of discontent in a matured manner.

Granted, there were unplanned fatalities, but we do not blame LASCO for these. Also, while government has been intransigent on its N141-per-litre-or-nothing stance, we appreciate that it has restrained itself from using the might of the military to quell this patently popular uprising. The lesson should however not be lost on us that even the insipid Boko Haram came to trinity with labour and civil society by sheathing its sword momentarily while the protests progress. It would have been terrible if the agents of death had unleashed their lethal elements on protesters.

We would like to remind the government that the stalemate in negotiation and its continued threats of "no work, no pay" and not discussing with "people on the street" would rather exacerbate an already haemorrhaging economy. The Petroleum and Energy Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), which has been producing the little oil currently powering the comatose skeletal services, has said it might join LASCO. That will further sleigh an economy currently losing N320bn daily.

The legislature, which constitutionally should keep the executive in check, has been brokering peace and asking that the Jonathan administration needs to stoop to conquer.

It has been a pipedream. We advise the executive to embrace and toe this propitious path of honour and eschew the hard road to perdition. People are angry because of the pervasive corruption in the system and the persistent insecurity and poor welfare conditions that pervade. There is virtue in coming down from the high horse to reason with the people whose mandate you hold in trust and who are saying they are willing to sacrifice if you convince them enough that you are trustworthy.