The planned protest over hardship in Nigeria has brought out President Bola Ahmed Tinubu as a leader who listens. Since the announcement of the planned protest, the president has not stopped talking to the people about the danger behind the plan and government’s sincere efforts to address the hardship that the protesters plan to highlight.
On the president’s urging, the National Assembly passed the new Minimum Wage Bill on record time to ameliorate the hardship faced by Nigerian workers.
The new minimum wage raised the pay of the lowest worker by a record 134 per cent.
President Tinubu has inaugurated the students’ loans scheme to ensure that everyone, no matter their financial background, has access to higher education as a means of fighting poverty.
Under the students’ loans scheme, each beneficiary is advanced a lump sum that covers school fees, books and something for the upkeep of the student for the duration of the course in a higher institution.
As agitation for the protest heightened defiantly, the federal government floated a new palliative for those who finished the National Youth Service scheme without finding a job. Under the prospective scheme, government would offer some stipends to the post-youth service persons who cannot find jobs.
On the economic front, the federal government is working feverishly to end the hardship. There are strong indications that the government’s efforts would yield results within months. The high energy cost that is fueling inflation and depleting the purchasing power of the naira would certainly be resolved before the end of this year.
The federal government has intervened in the squabbles between the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) and Dangote Refinery in a bid to ensure that the refinery gets crude oil from Nigeria to enable it supply cheaper refined petroleum products to the domestic market.
Besides, the nation’s four refineries are scheduled to come on stream between now and December. Port Harcourt Refinery would come on stream by the middle of August, and would be followed by Warri Refinery within a few months. Kaduna Refinery would resume refining of crude oil by December.
Dangote Refinery promises not only cheaper fuel but massive generation of foreign exchange through export of refined petroleum products and petrochemicals.
Aliko Dangote, president of the conglomerate, said last week that his refinery and the petrochemical plant would generate a minimum of $30 billion annually from exports.
Consequently, NNPCL has assured that by December 2024, Nigeria would switch from net importer to major exporter of refined petroleum products.
The sum total of all this is that if Dangote alone rakes in $30 billion from refined petroleum products exports and the four refineries chip in something in addition to that, the catastrophic forex supply deficit behind the naira’s disorderly retreat in the foreign exchange market would be halted and the naira could trade at N800 to the dollar within months.
With Nigeria soon to end its shameful dependence on imported petroleum products, there would be cheaper fuel and a minimum of $20 billion would be saved annually. That would be the end of imported inflation.
From all indications, there is light at the end of the tunnel and all that is needed is for Nigeria’s resilient youths to be patient for just a few more months.
President Tinubu’s plea that the protest is absolutely unnecessary is more in the interest of the youths. The consequences of the planned protest are very easy to predict given the sad experience with the EndSARS protest of October 2021.
The youth that the protesters planned to protect through their action are normally the first casualties of the protest.
Scores of youths lost their lives in the EndSARS protest when bandits hijacked the protest and unleashed mayhem and pandemonium that degenerated into a looting spree.
Bandits burnt about 100 new buses in the Lagos state BRT fleet. Each of the burnt bus cost $100,000. Today, the masses that were to be protected by the protesters are the ones paying the price for the arson because Lagos state has not been able to replace the buses. The BRT fleet has been depleted resulting in long queues at terminals by the masses that were to be protected by the protest.
The planned protest from August 1 will almost certainly suffer the same fate and inflict similar casualties on the protesters as it would, again, be hijacked by hoodlums.
Blueprint, therefore, joins millions of responsible Nigerians to plead with the persevering youths to shelve the protest and wait a few more months for government’s gestures to yield the expected returns.