Removing the subsidy on peace
By Femi Adesina (kulikulii@yahoo.com, 08055001928)
Friday November 18, 2011
The sword of Damocles hangs on the head of Nigerians as the Goodluck Jonathan administration is bent on removing the ‘subsidy’ on petrol from next year. The government bandies diverse figures, all running into trillions, as what it uses to subsidize petrol. It argues that such funds could be better used if ploughed into other pressing areas of national life.

But other people say subsidy is a euphemism for fraud, and that there’s no real subsidy on petrol. Eminent virologist and former Oil Minister, Prof Tam David-West, is in the vanguard of that school of thought, and like a one-man riot squad, he has been giving lectures round the country, saying there’s nothing called subsidy. He says to remove the spurious subsidy, and drive prices of petrol and other goods and services astronomically high, is to court the wrath of the populace. I agree with him.

In 2009, under the Umaru Yar’Adua’s administration, when this same issue came up, I did a piece on March 6, with the headline ‘Deregulation: Even if it rhymes, nonsense is still nonsense?.’ I reproduce the piece again, because I believe the arguments are still the same, though the figures and the personalities have changed. The new headline above, I must credit to journalist and poet, Akeem Lasisi, who wrote and sang about removing the subsidy on peace in his new work, Eleleture. It is a big question. Will this government not remove the subsidy on peace, and bite more than it can chew? The piece below:

President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is now ready to chastise us with scorpions. Yes, that is the summary of the declaration that the downstream sector of the petroleum industry has been totally deregulated. What it means in simple language is that our lives have been too easy, and we need to know that life is not really a bed of roses, that roses equally have thorns.?? The Presidential Steering Committee on the global economic crisis, at the end of its meeting in Abuja last week, announced the full deregulation, saying government had in the last one year alone spent N640 billion in subsidizing petroleum products, with the amount running into N1.6 trillion in the last three years.? These figures from the steering committee are in direct variance with what the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Odein Ajumogobia, told us last year. He had said N1.5 trillion is spent as subsidy on petroleum products in one year, with petrol alone consuming N770 billion. ??You can now see that government is recklessly contradicting itself in order to ram an unpopular policy down our throats. If the refineries are not working, and refined petrol has to be imported at prohibitive costs, is it the fault of the average Nigerian? God has blessed this land with petroleum resources, why must it turn to doom for us, simply because of irresponsible leadership over the years?

There is global economic crisis, and there is the urgent need to cut costs and make savings. Fine logic. Good economic theory. But what of the social costs? What of the havoc it will do to the social fabric? What of the carnage and damage it would visit on the lives of the ordinary people? Yes, even if it rhymes, and it gives you good rhythm, nonsense is still nonsense. A bad coin is a bad coin, whether it jingles or not.?
When Ajumogobia announced last year that full deregulation was on the cards, I did a piece entitled: ‘N1.5 trillion fuel subsidy, so what?’ I still stand by what I wrote. Let me refresh the reader’s memory: “Ajumogobia says in the past one year more than N770 billion has been spent to subsidize petrol, and when added to the figure spent on diesel, everything comes to about N1.5 trillion. And I ask: So what? Who led us into this sorry pass in the first place, is it not government? Why must the ordinary Nigerian be made to bear the brunt of the obtuseness and inefficiency of successive governments?”

Since the issue of petroleum subsidy became a national controversy, particularly under the Olusegun Obasanjo regime, I had always stood on one point. And I stand on it again today. It is one of the duties and responsibilities of government to make life easier for the people. Any government that will have relevance and acceptability, must make petroleum products available for us at the cheapest price possible, considering what we suffer in other areas of our national life. No electricity, no roads, poor healthcare facilities, comatose education, parlous security, in fact, social services are at zero level. Why then make us pay more for petroleum products, with the excuse that the savings will be diverted to other areas of development? Permit me to again recall how I put it in the July 26, 2008 piece:?

“By the way, is it not one of the responsibilities of government to make life easier for the people? If N1.5 trillion per year is what it will take to do it, so be it. It will only reduce what light-fingered officials in public offices will salt away in local and foreign banks as their own ‘Abacha loot.’ Their forebears who ran the refineries aground live in obscene splendour today, and why not have their own share? They will tell you that when subsidy is removed, they will use it to fix our roads, power, education etc. But the plain truth is this: Nigeria is endowed enough to continue with the subsidy for as long as needed, and still fix other essential sectors of national life. The Obasanjo regime attempted to remove subsidy several times for the same reasons now being advanced by Ajumogobia, yet it squandered between 10 and 18 billion dollars on the power sector. The ordinary man is just made a scapegoat for nothing. The problem with Nigeria is not poverty of purse, it is poverty of purpose.”