Nigerian rulers have a penchant for doing first things last. That explains why Nigeria is always moving in the wrong direction. The current wailing, starvation and deaths plaguing the land could have been avoided if President Bola Ahmed Tinubu had done first things first in the process of petrol subsidy withdrawal.
What the president reeled out in his nationwide broadcast on Monday, July 31 were the things he should have done before announcing the withdrawal of petrol subsidy.
Unfortunately he behaved like his predecessors and put the cart before the horse by announcing petrol subsidy withdrawal before thinking of palliatives that could protect Nigeria’s 140 million people toiling below poverty line from the devastating effect of subsidy withdrawal.
Ironically the damage has been done. The belated palliatives cannot address the damage on ground because the measures are grossly inadequate.
There are strong indications that the coup in Niger Republic, Nigeria impoverished northern neighbor would have stampeded President Tinubu into hurriedly slapping together the palliatives he announced in the nationwide broadcast.
The sight of Niger’s ruling party headquarters being razed to the ground by misguided pro-coup protesters impoverished by bad governance moved him to pre-empt a similar situation in Nigeria.
What shocked everyone was the president’s plan to beef up the nation’s dwindling fleet of commercial buses with 3, 000 buses.
Someone was so disappointed with the plan that he derisively asked whether the 3, 000 buses were meant for Lagos state alone. That is just about what Lagos state BRT needs to make any impact.
No one knows what the president plans to do with the N1trillion the federal government saved from the withdrawal of petrol subsidy. The humongous sum in government purse is responsible for the starvation and deaths plaguing Nigeria at the moment.
The whole sum should be ploughed into palliatives. In the next two months, the federal government would have saved N2 trillion from petrol subsidy withdrawal. The money can buy 25, 000 units of 60-seater luxury buses to beef up BRT fleets across the country.
The buses should be shared on the basis of population. Lagos state with a bumper population of well over 20 million should be allocated 3, 000 buses. Other states can get anything from 500 to 1, 000 buses each, depending on population.
Such gesture could break the back of exploitative commercial bus drivers who raised transport fares by 100 per cent the day the president announced his pre-emptive strike on petrol subsidy.
The perception of the labour unions is that the federal government is just tormenting Nigeria’s inconsequential majority with atrociously high pump price of petrol to sustain the weird opulence of its top officials.
The labour unions contend that government is not behaving like Nigeria is broke. Tinubu has sent an exceptionally long list of ministerial nominees to the senate for approval at a time when the cost of governance gulps close to 80 per cent of Nigeria’s miserable revenue.
President Joe Biden manages America’s $21 trillion economy with a cabinet of 15 ministers. Tinubu would manage Nigeria’s $450 billion economy with 48 ministers. That amounts to creating jobs for his foot soldiers by tormenting Nigeria’s silent majority with excruciating economic levies.
Politicians and top civil servants hit the streets with intimidating convoys of limousines. Each enters the road with a convoy of seven cars. They have defiantly maintained their reprehensible sense of duplication.
Each politician has two Land Cruiser or similar limousines. The back-up limousine follows the minister without a passenger. The fear is that the minister’s main limousine could break down at any moment.
That fear is grossly misplaced. The back-up limousine is therefore a senseless show of opulence in the midst of abject poverty. It should be phased out.
The National Assembly has greedily allocated to its 469 members a princely sum of N70 billion as palliative. Each member gets N228.7 million from the sum. No one knows what people whose monthly salaries hovers around N27 million would do with palliatives in a country that services its mountain of debt with 93 per cent of its miserable revenue.
One thing that bothers every observer of the current administration is the president’s incomprehensible aversion to the fight against corruption.
The stampeded withdrawal of petrol subsidy is a cowardly surrender to corruption. The president followed the line of least resistance in the course of removing the intimidating obstacle mounted by corruption on the subsidy path.
Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) made petrol subsidy rather unwieldy by tripling Nigeria’s daily consumption figure. Nigeria consumes 28 million liters of petrol in a day.
Strangely, NNPCL deducts subsidy at the rate of 102 million liters per day and dumps the remaining pittance in the federation account for sharing by the three tiers of government.
Somebody had to be punished for the colossal fraud. People expected the president to round up the scammers within NNPCL, compel them to refund the loot, prosecute and send them to jail.
The option would have been to recover the colossal loots and tell them to go and sin no more. But the president, like his predecessors, was intimidated by the mien of the mega thieves.
In the process he discovered that it is easier to punish Nigeria’s inconsequential majority with excruciating economic pains. He opted to punish the powerless majority for the sins of the powerful few. That is precisely why petrol subsidy was removed.
The wailings, starvation and deaths in the land today emanate from the removal of subsidy without consideration for palliatives that could reduce the suffering.
If the subsidy was removed after the president had formed his cabinet, there would be a minister of labour to negotiate crucial palliatives with labour unions without catastrophic delays.
Now that the president has decided to do first things last, the cost of battling the damage to the economy as a result of the unplanned subsidy withdrawal would almost certainly be higher, because it is cheaper to prevent a disease than to cure it.
