Fuel Subsidy Contradictions in Nigeria : New Nigerian President as Opposition Leader in 2012 and Now

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Is the speech below from another forum really by Nigeria’s new President whose first act in office was to do exactly what he criticized a past President as doing as shown in the speech 

If so why could he have changed his mind and what are the implications 

I would appreciate help with responses to these questions 

I am very disturbed about the direction Nigetia is going 

REMOVAL OF OIL SUBSIDY: PRESIDENT JONATHAN BREAKS SOCIAL CONTRACT WITH THE PEOPLE

11th January, 2012

By Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

As Nigerians gathered with family and friends to celebrate the New Year, the federal government was baking a national cake wrapped in the scheme that would instantly make the New Year a bitter one. Barely had the public weaned itself from last year when government dropped a historic surprise on an unsuspecting nation. PPPRA issued a statement abolishing the fuel subsidy. By this sly piece of paper, the federal government breached the social contract with the people. This government, which owes its very existence to the people’s desire to be governed by someone more humble than elitist, has turned its back on the collective will. By bureaucratic fiat, government made the most fateful economic decision any administration has made since the inception of the Fourth Republic and it has done so with an arrogant wave of the hand as if issuing a minor regulation. Because of the terrible substance of the decision and the haughty style of its enactment, the people feel betrayed and angry. At this moment, we know not to where this anger will lead. In good conscience, we pray against violence. Also in good conscience, it is the duty of every citizen to peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition to this draconian measure that is swiftly crippling the economy more than it will ever cure it.

By taking this step, government has tossed the people into the depths of the midnight sea. Government demands the people swim to safety under their own power, claiming the attendant hardship will build character and add efficiency to the national economy. It is easy to make these claims when one is dry and on shore. Government would have us believe that every hardship it manufactures for the people to endure is a good thing. This is a lie. The hardships they thrust upon the poor often bear no other purpose than to keep them poor. This is such a time.

I am not calling President Jonathan an evil man. I do not believe he is perverse. However, the economic ideas controlling him are so misguided that they have a perverse impact. Because he is slave to wrong-headed economics, the people will become enslaved to greater misery. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy. The people now pay a steep tax for voting him into office. The removal of the subsidy is the “Jonathan tax.” This situation shows that ideas count more than personalities. People may occupy office but how that person performs depends on the ideas that occupy his mind.

Though someday, Nigeria will have to remove the subsidy, the time to do it is not now. This subsidy removal is ill-timed and violates the condition precedent necessary before such a decision is made. First, government needs to clean up and throw away the salad of corruption in the NNPC. Then, proceed to lay the foundation for a mass transit system in the railways and road network with long term bonds and fully develop the energy sector towards revitalizing Nigeria’s economy and easing the burden any subsidy removal may have on the people.

But we know this is about more than the fuel subsidy. It is about government’s ideas on the role of money in better the lives of people, about the relationship between government and the people and about the primary objective of government’s interaction in the economy. It is about whom, among the Nigeria’s various social classes, does government most value. This is why public reaction has been heated. It is not so much that people have to spend more money. It is because people feel short-changed and sold out.

Government seeks to convince us that the Jonathan tax is an unavoidable decision mandated by immutable economic principles. If you accept their premise, you must agree with their conclusion. However, their argument falters at its inception. There are few immutable economic principles. Economics is not an exact science with unbreakable rules like physics.

Economics is no less subjective than politics. It was born an offshoot of politics and there it remains. What this government claims to be economic decisions are essentially political ones. As there is progressive politics, there is progressive economics. As there is elitist politics, there is elitist economics. It all depends on what and who in society government would rather favor. The Jonathan tax represents a new standard in elitism.

This whole issue boils down to whether government believes the general public is worth a certain level of expenditure. It is like the situation where a man dates more than one woman. To each, he promises love thus nothing can be deduced from his words. However, we know he will spend and dote more on one and she will be the one he loves above the others. When banks were in distress, government produced billions of naira out of thin air and in record time. It was explained the swift expenditure was needed to stop the banking system from imploding. There was no worry that government would be bankrupted. If the banks were to fall twenty times in the future, government would jump twenty times to their rescue. It does so because this government lives a conservative economics placing it in close alliance, if not collusion, with corporate power.

However, because the distance between government and the people is far and genuine level of affection is low, government sees no utility in continuing to spend the current level of money on the people. In their mind, the people are not worth the money. Government sees more value in “saving” money than in saving the hard-pressed masses.

Yet, what does government actually save by this measure? The concept of a government that has the unfettered ability to print its own currency needing to save that currency for fear of insolvency is an anachronism. That his economic advisors would cling to this notion is like a person insisting on taking to the expressway in a horse-drawn carriage. For a government that prints its own currency, attempting to save in that very currency in order to defend against bankruptcy in that currency is a relic of the gold standard abandoned forty years ago. If government thrashed the fuel subsidy based on considerations that it will run out of naira then it based its decision on a factor that have not been relevant since the time of the Biafran war.

In 1971, the world left the gold standard replacing it with “state” or “fiat money.” Under the gold standard, a nation had to save gold to support its currency or risk insolvency. After 1971, bondage to gold was broken. Since then, the worth of a nation’s currency is not tied to gold which means that the ability of a nation to print currency is not determined by its holdings of gold. The worth of the currency is based on the strength of the economy and the amount of money the nation prints is determined by that strength as well as the nation’s future economic objectives. A nation can no longer fall insolvent concerning debts or payments issued in the national currency. As long as the fuel subsidy is paid in naira, then Nigeria cannot go bankrupt paying it any more than the ocean can run out of salt water. In a fiat money system, the problem with the fuel subsidy is not impending insolvency as the government asserts. The serious constraint is inflation. Here we must ask whether the payment is so inflationary as to distort the economy. We have been making the payment for years and inflation has not wrecked the economy. This historic evidence refutes the imminent disaster claimed by government.

In advancing the argument that subsidy would lead to imminent bankruptcy, government reveals its lack of trustworthiness on important matters of fact. Is this the same government that several weeks ago claimed Nigeria was among the world’s best performing economies with a GDP growth rate of 7 percent annually? It seems government has a vast canvas on which it can paint a number of different scenarios of Nigeria depending on the whim of the moment. While government may alter its portrait of the nation, the people are forced to live one reality at a time. Is Nigeria a fast growing economy? If the nation’s GDP is growing so strongly, the subsidy or a similar expenditure on the people cannot be the lethal burden government now maligns it to be.

Nigerians have a collective stake in the ownership of our oil resource held in trust by the government of the day. What we need then is the effective management of this scarce resource that will beget long term prosperity to the suffering people of Nigeria and not the present racket in which those in power abuse access and control of NNPC and oil revenue to warehouse money to fund their election campaigns.

This brings us to another inconsistency. On one hand, government states the expenditure is unsustainable yet on the other it claims the amount now earmarked for the subsidy will be used to fund other people-oriented programs. However, the two assertions cannot exist at the same time . If the subsidy is bankrupting us, then reallocating funds to different programs will be no less harmful. A bankrupting expenditure retains this quality whether used for the subsidy or another purpose. Earmarking the funds to something else will not change the fiscal impact. If government is sincere about using the funds for other programs, then it must be insincere about the threatened insolvency.

The concern about government saving naira is purely superfluous. Officials cry that Nigeria will become like Greece. Those who say this disqualify themselves from high office by their own words. Greece sits in a terrible situation because it forfeited its own currency. Thus, it cannot print itself out of insolvency and it must save or earn euro to pay its bills. Because Nigeria issues its own currency, it does not face the same constraint. Again, Nigeria’s problem with the subsidy is not insolvency. Therefore, to go from subsidy to nothing is not wise economics for it “saves” government nothing. What it does is produce real havoc and misery for the majority of the people while the governing elite worship their mistaken fiscal rectitude. Ironically, by acting like the old gold standard fiscal constraints are real, this government will incur the very thing it seeks to avoid. It will subject Nigeria to a crushing economic contraction. The difference between us and the Greeks will be that their situation is the inevitable result of being a weak member in a monetary union dominated by a strong economy, while our downturn will be a discretionary one artificially induced by the backwardness of our policymakers.

By its action, our government placed itself on the list of conservative governments imposing unwise austerity programs on tired and weak economies. The results have been alarming. Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and the UK have imposed stiff austerity. Each nation that has done so now has an intimate relationship with recession. Must we travel the same path? Why does our government think an independently-minded Nigerian success is inferior to the mimicry of European failure? I don’t understand why we take this road. Our government has allied itself with the goals of the European conservatives and not with the needs of the Nigerian populace. No one plucks a chicken to feed his children feathers. Nor does a man set his house on fire just so people can bring him water. However, this is spirit behind government policy. There has been no nation on the face of the planet that has developed or achieved long-term prosperity by devotion to conservative, ultra-free market economic ideas that dominate this government. America, the United Kingdom, and now China all based their initial thrust toward national economic development on significant government interplay in the economy and on sustained government fiscal deficits. If no nation has grown using these conservative ideas when growth was constrained by the gold standard, why would we shackle ourselves to these ideas when we operate under a monetary system that provides the federal government greater policy latitude to achieve economic development objectives.

Again, we must rid ourselves of the old notion that government saving and budgetary surpluses are inherently good and that deficits are always bad. For government to save naira, that means it brings in more than it pays out. Where does this influx come from? It comes from you and me, the private sector. If the federal government saves more, it means the private sector will have less. Government surplus means private sector contraction. This shows that the administration has its priorities confused. It acts as if the people are there to help government run itself. The more beneficial relationship is that government should be giving people the help needed to better live their lives. The government’s position is akin to a wealthy parent demanding his young children bring home more food for him to consume than the parent gives them to eat. We would deride any parent for such meanness. Yet, this government believes this conduct is wise and prudent.

Another argument government has presented is that removal of the subsidy will stabilize the exchange rate. This makes no sense. True, since marketers convert much of the naira from selling petrol gained into dollars, there is downward pressure on the exchange rate and foreign reserves. However, this pressure is not a byproduct of the subsidy. It is a byproduct of importation. With the subsidy lifted, the marketers will earn the same or more from the sale of petrol. For there to be less pressure on the exchange rate would mean the marketers would seek to exchange significantly less of the same amount of naira into dollars simply because the subsidy was removed. There is no logical basis to assume the new Jonathan tax will have the behavioral impact of causing importers to want to hold more naira. The downward pressure on our currency and reserves will not change simply because the imported items are no longer subsidized. In fact, the higher rate of inflation caused by the removal may make importers keener to change naira into dollars. Thus, the real challenge in this regard is for government to pave the way to increased domestic production.

There is another “philosophical mystery” in the government’s position. They state the subsidy must be removed to end the unjust enrichment of the importing cabal. There is a major problem with this assertion. If this is truly a subsidy, there should be no unjust enrichment. A subsidy is created to allow the general public to pay a lesser price while sellers earn the prevailing market price. Subsidy removal should not increase or decrease the amount earned per litre by the suppliers. If the amount earned by the suppliers will diminish materially, what government had been operating was in part a pro-importer price support mechanism on top of the consumer-friendly subsidy. If this is the case, government could have abolished the unneeded price support while retaining the consumer subsidy. More to the point, government has failed to show how the system it plans to use will be protected from the undue influence and unfair dealings of those who benefited from the discarded subsidy regime. Because it is capital intensive by its very nature, this sector of the economy is susceptible to control by a few powerful companies. Most of the players will remain the same except that a few cronies of the administration will be allowed entrance into the lucrative game. Sending the economy into the gutter is a steep cost to pay just so a few friends can reap a new windfall.

Government claims the subsidy removal will create jobs. This is misleading. The stronger truth is that it will destroy more jobs than it creates. For every job it creates in the capital intensive petroleum sector, it will terminate several jobs in the rest of the labor intensive economy. Subsidy removal will increase costs across the board. However, salaries will not increase. This means demand for goods will lessen as will sales volumes and overall economic activity. The removal will have a recessionary impact on the economy as a whole. While some will benefit from the removal, most will experience setback.

What is doubtless is that the Jonathan tax will increase the price of petrol, transportation and most consumer items. With fuel prices increasing twofold or more, transportation costs will roughly double. Prices of food staples will increase between 25-50 percent. Yet this is more than about cost figures. Most people’s incomes are low and stagnant. They have no way to augment revenue and little room to lower expenses for they know no luxuries; they are already tapped out. The only alternative they have is to fend as best they can, knowing they must somehow again subtract something from their already bare existence. There will be less food, less medicine, and less school across the land. More children will cry in hunger and more parents will cry at their children’s despair. This is what government has done. Poor and middle class consumers will spend the same amount to buy much less. The volume of economic activity will drop like a stone tossed from a high building. This means real levels of demand will sink. The middle class to which our small businessmen belong will find their profit margins squeezed because they will face higher costs and reduced sales volumes. These small firms employ vast numbers of Nigerians. They will be hard pressed to maintain current employment levels given the higher costs and lower revenues they will face. Because the middle class businessman will be pinched, those who depend on the businessmen for employment will be heavily pressed. States that earn significant revenue from internally generated funds will find their positions damaged. Internally generated revenue will decline because of the pressure on general economic activity. The Jonathan tax will push Nigeria toward an inflation-recession combination punch worse than the one that has Europe reeling. This tax has doomed Nigeria to extra hardship for years to come while the promised benefits of deregulation will never be substantially realized. People will starve and families crumble while federal officials praise themselves for “saving money.” The purported savings amount to nothing more than an accounting entry on the government ledger board. They bear no indication of the real state of the economy or of the great harm done the people by this miserly step.

As stated before, the threat of bankruptcy is nothing more than a ghost of something long dead. The real consideration is not whether this sum should be spent but whether it is better spent on the subsidy or on other programs. Nigerians do not need to be wedded to the subsidy. It is not the subsidy that gives life to the social compact; the amount of the expenditure is the better litmus. When attempting to douse popular sentiment, government pretended that the social contract would remain intact because government would spend the money saved from the subsidy on other programs. This would be nice if supported by action. If government were sincere in this regard, it would have used an entirely different strategy. It would have looked on the removal as evolutionary, long-term process instead of as a sudden event accomplished by executive decree. If government had proceeded along these lines, it would have first perfected the plans for the new programs and projects that would receive the funds previously allocated the subsidy. These plans would have been in place and ready to implement. Only then would the subsidy be removed. To say that they will develop programs once the subsidy is removed suggests government‘s heart is not in these alternatives. Government only raised this possibility as a public relations afterthought to douse public opposition.

For instance, the government’s top spokesperson said it was obvious the Administration had guillotined the subsidy since it was not included in the 2012 budget. If we take this as the measure, there is no evidence in that budget of government transferring the bulk of “subsidy savings” to other programs. Using the reasoning employed by government itself, the budget reveals no sympathetic plan to buffer the effects of the Jonathan tax.

Even if government wanted to engage in naira-for-naira alternative social spending, it would take well over a year for the programs to have even minimal effect. Such expenditures would require new legislation. Given the pace of the National Assembly, such legislation would take months even if fast tracked. Then appropriations would have to be made before the process of procurement began. If the federal government were to buy sufficient buses to subsidize urban transport across the nation, orders would have to be placed for the purchase and importation of these buses. Again, months would elapse. If we are aiming at major road construction, the processes of project planning and contract bidding will require well over a year after a project is approved and funds appropriated. Last, government has just established a large committee to oversee this alternative expenditure. We have no need for another such body. If competent, government would not require this help. Moreover, we have seen this tactic before. Time and money will be devoted to running the committee. More attention will go to the committee’s emoluments than to its fundamental work. The actual parameters of the committee’s scope of work are nebulous and ill-defined. Will it have the authority to act or only advise? This looks like another blind alley where government hopes to misdirect our attention. This committee is not meant to accomplish anything except to numb public opposition. Government hopes people will posit confidence in the body because of the eminent people named to it. By the time the public discovers the committee is a zombie creation, too much time would have elapsed and it will be too late to reignite public protests. The people then will resign themselves to their fate. This trick has worked in the past; it will not work today because the people are much too aware and too agitated.

In the end, the federal government has done the nation an awful disservice at the worst time. This is an unneeded and avoidable emergency. Pursuing the grail of elitist economics, the federal government brings economic disaster to our doorstep. Attempting to protect government bank accounts from false bankruptcy, they push the people into real bankruptcy. Government is relying on the fact that the people are long-suffering and patient. They think the people will quickly forget this latest assault and return to the grueling challenge of daily survival. Government thinks people will be so fixated on survival that they will forget government has made survival more difficult. Rarely has a government been this cynical. Not even the reclusive Yar’adua or the dictator, Obasanjo placed this hardship on the people. Of course, Nigerians know that Obasanjo failed spectacularly to lay the necessary infrastructural foundation which could have made the recent removal of subsidy an easier decision for President Jonathan and a lesser burden for Nigerians to bear.

Nigeria in Jonathan is confronted with a government “on top of the people” rather than a “government for the people”. It is as if Jonathan has turned from president to pharaoh and has decreed that the people make bricks without straw. What manner of leader has he become? I don’t know. However, there is only one just way out of this distress. Government must modify the sudden and complete removal of the subsidy. Either we restore the subsidy or use the funds for other social purposes. If we are to use the funds for other programs, those programs shall be placed on parallel track with the subsidy. As more of these programs are ready to go on line, then the subsidy can be lifted in phases. In this way, the public is assured government will not lower its total expenditure on their behalf, thus maintaining the spirit central to the social contract. Fuel price increases will be moderated so as not to cause extreme economic distress. And the people will see and feel the benefit of the alternative programs at the same time of the cost increases, thus further blunting the adverse impact of those increases. Until this change occurs, the people must remain vigilant or else we will sink under the weight of what the federal government has done.

Signed: Asiwaju Tinubu, January 8, 2012.

[ogunlakaiye]

Can you, please, give us the source of this article or statement credited to Asiwaju Tinubu and purportedly signed by him on January 8, 2012 but published January 11, 2012?

S. Kadiri

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Corrected : 

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, 

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”

First of all, it should be in place and proper to offer sincere & hearty congratulations to President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu on his taking the oath of office, to wish him the best guidance from the most beneficent Almighty, and all success in his every effort in tackling all the challenges that he will be facing, and the needed blessings in all his endeavours towards the betterment of the nation, Nigeria. 

I thank God that the big palaver, and the emotions that were being unleashed when discussing  “the Fulani Herdsmen”, and some aspects of practical Islam etc, have now subsided (I almost wrote “ subsidised”)  

I suppose that since the duly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was not your first choice in the most recently concluded Nigerian Presidential Elections, you  feel that you have every democratic right to be on the warpath again, just for the record, starting on Day One of the JAGABAN’s Presidency. I’m a little more impressed by the always nuanced Chidi Anthony Opara, the more cautiously optimistic and patiently watchful poet, especially since he is prepared to give his newly elected president of all Nigerians, the benefit of whatever doubts and concerns may be lurking in his politically poetic mindset, especially the special concerns of the folks at the Owerri Motor Park in his ethnic enclave/backyard and this he has expressed in his cautionary, “The next 100 days would determine my relationship with Bola Tinubu, Nigeria's incoming President.” It’s a good wait and see attitude. 

And I guess President Tinubu has definitely taken the bull by the horns, and hit the ground running with his declaration that he has put a stop forthwith to this subsidy business. That’s what’s known as decisive action. From Day One. A man of action. Drastic times call for drastic measures. After the interminable back and forth discussions on fuel subsidies, over the years, Cornelius Ignoramus is still at a loss as to, in the long term - the best way forward for the people and the country. I will have to consult with, not some besserwisser “professor of everything”  but with my own personal Guru, Baba Kadiri.

Have you by any chance read Buhari: The illusion of hope, by Ojogbon Falola ?

The title is a suggestive take off from Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope - and thank God, he is equally on the positive side : “ it is my message to the next president of Nigeria that the nation needs real change” -  you can’t be more optimistic than that, and you can’t be more optimistic than saying “Amen” after every “ InshAllah”.  As a man of faith and as a historian of the past and not a doomsday prophet of the future, he may say he’s being realistic, although if things should take a downward turn and spiral out of control - as in “the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”, I wouldn’t put it past Ojogbon Falola to succumb to the  - on day one it’s  “ Hosanna” and some time later “ Crucify him” paradigm, at which time, in a more frustrated or pessimistic mode, the Ojogbon could well come out with a full-fledged book entitled “ The Illusions of Sanity”

So, although the situation has changed somewhat or indeed, has changed a lot, you want to hold Asiwaju Tinubu's feet to the heat of the fire because of what he wrote eleven years ago? Well, bear in mind that he did say  this :” Though someday, Nigeria will have to remove the subsidy, the time to do it is not now.”

Perhaps, the time has come or the conditions are being laid , to determine that the time is ripe?  

The Dangote oil Refinery is certainly going to make a huge difference. 

I should like to draw you attention to a few ideas Ojogbon Falola floated in his article “ The Illusion of Hope” - and please bear in mind that if we were to  lose all hope, or believe that hope is an illusion, we would have next to nothing left to clutch on to when the sea gets really rough and tempestuous, as every good sailor knows:

# “Leadership is pivotal to development

Everything follows from this 

On Wednesday, 31 May 2023 at 01:18:05 UTC+2 Cornelius Hamelberg wrote:

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, 

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune”

First of all, it should be in place and proper to offer sincere & hearty congratulations to 

President Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu on his taking the oath of office, to wish him the best guidance from the most beneficent Almighty, and all success In his every effort in tackling all the challenges that he will be facing, and  the needed blessings in all his  endeavours towards the betterment of the nation, Nigeria. 

I thank God that the the big palaver, and the emotions that were being unleashed when discussing  “the Fulani Herdsmen”, and some aspects of practical Islam etc, have now subsided (I almost wrote “ subsidised”)  

 

I suppose that since the duly elected President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was not your first choice in the most recently concluded Nigerian Presidential Elections, you  feel that you have every democratic right to be on the warpath again, just for the record, starting on Day One of the JAGABAN’s Presidency. I’m a little more impressed by the always nuanced Chidi Anthony Opara, the more cautiously optimistic and patiently watchful poet, especially since he is prepared to give his newly elected president of all Nigerians, the benefit of whatever doubts and concerns may be lurking in his politically poetic mindset, especially the special concerns of the folks at the Owerri Motor Park in his ethnic enclave/backyard and this he has expressed in his cautionary, “The next 100 days would determine my relationship with Bola Tinubu, Nigeria's incoming President.” It’s a good wait and see attitude. 

And I guess President Tinubu has definitely taken the bull by the hors, and hit the ground running with his declaration that he has put a stop forthwith to this subsidy business. That’s what’s known as decisive action. From Day One. A man of action. Drastic times call for drastic measures. After the interminable back and forth discussions on fuel subsidies over the years, Cornelius Ignoramus is still at a loss as to, in the long term - the best way forward for the people and the country. I will have to consult with, not some besserwisser “professor of everything”  but with my own personal Guru, Baba Kadiri.

Have you by any chance read Buhari: The illusion of hope, by Ojogbon Falola ?

The title is suggestive take off from Barack Obama’s The Audacity of Hope - and thank God, he is equally on the positive side “ it is my message to the next president of Nigeria that the nation needs real change” -  you can’t be more optimistic than that,  and you can’t be more optimistic than saying “Amen” after every “ InshAllah”.  As a man of faith and as a historian of the past and not a doomsday prophet  of the future, he may say,  he’s being realistic, although if things should take a downward turn and spiral out of control - as in “the best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry”, I wouldn’t put it past Ojogbon Falola to succumb to the  - one day one it’s  “ Hosanna” and some time later “ Crucify him” paradigm, at which time, in a more frustrated or pessimistic mode, the Ojogbon could well come out with a full-fledged book entitled “ The Illusion of Sanity”

So, although the situation has changed somewhat or indeed, has changed a lot, you want to hold Asiwaju Tinubu's feet to the heat of the fire because of what he wrote eleven  years ago? Well, bear in mind that he did say  this :” Though someday, Nigeria will have to remove the subsidy, the time to do it is not now.”

Perhaps the time has come or the conditions are being laid , to determine that the time is ripe?  The Dangote oil Refinery is certainly going to make a huge difference. 

I should like to draw you attention to a few ideas floated in his article “ The Illusion of Hope” - and please bear in mind that if we were to  lose all hope, or believe that hope is an illusion, we would have next to nothing left to clutch on to when the sea gets really rough and tempestuous, as every good sailor knows:

# “Leadership is pivotal to development

Everything follows from this 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks gentlemen 

The piece comes from a WhatsApp group

I don’t know if it’s really from Tinubu 

I’ll investigate 

It does lay out a rich argument on how to handle the subsidy challenge in a way that will not be devastating for Nigerians

An approach very different from the current implementation  

We all recall there was robust civil society opposition to GEJs efforts to do exactly what Tinubu has just done and GEJ backed down if I recall correctly 

If I’ve been collating views on the current development which I hope to share 

As it is the price of fuel has risen from 1-200 naira a litre yesterday to 4-600 naira a litre as of today 

What will Nigerians gain from this transformation?

What multiplier effects will it have on prices generally particularly for food, transportation and other fundamental necessities along with health, education and other needs?

Will the opportunity cost be worth it?

I am very disturbed 

Thanks

Toyin

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[ogunlakaiye]

Dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

                                                            I wish to advise you that before you allow a thought or a piece of information to enter your mind, put it through the triple filter of authenticity, goodness and value. I have the list of 71 so-called oil marketers who jointly collected N230.184 billion for unsupplied petrol volume of 3, 262, 960, 225 litres in 2011 from the Federal Government. Thanks to Abubakar Malami and the late Abba Kyari who was Buhari's Chief of Staff, fuel subsidy largesse continued even as of today. The economy of Nigeria is still at the age of riding ass, donkey or horse and Nigerians are talking fuel importation for imported motor vehicles. Are we stupid people?

S. Kadiri

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

im puzzled sir

are you not mixing two things without resolving either one?

did GEJ not try to do what BAT has just done and the so called progressive elements, including Soyinka, a group with which BAT has long been associated with as part of the political opposition mobilized massively against him and he backed down?

Did APC come into power in 2015 with a campaign against removing fuel subsidy?

Was BAT not part of the opposition crying about restructuring for years till they reached Aso Rock and kept their peace?

Is it improbable that detailed analysis about how to do subsidy could have come from BAT and at the time it did in contradiction to his current actions?

The only reason I have not researched the issue is bacs I'm quite busy right now if not I would have done so

As for your last sentence you are on your own if you think this a serious statement -''The economy of Nigeria is still at the age of riding ass, donkey or horse and Nigerians are talking fuel importation for imported motor vehicles.''

  Why do some Nigerians insist on self destructive defense of Nigerian politicians?  Is it because you dont live in Nigeria you make some odd defenses?

Someone is asking serious questions about how this policy is shaping the lives of Nigerians and you are responding as if we are playing a tragic game?

Please if you persist along these lines Im likely to leave you alone bcs I have to be careful of my time.

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/411289e1-9ccc-4b76-89a6-fd09984a30d1n%40googlegroups.com.

[ogunlakaiye]

Don't be angry, my dear Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju, because anger is one of the greatest route to perdition. Functionally, anger makes us walk away from our senses, acting out irrational violence (either psychologically or physically) as a response which, quite often, we end up regretting. I considered the discussion on Fuel Subsidy posted by you ended the moment you admitted that the article said to have been authored by Bola Ahmed Tinubu in 2012 came from a nameless WhatsApp group of which you do not know if it really originated from BAT. Why did you post something you were not sure of if it were fake or genuine? With that question in my mind, I responded with an advice to you.

In your angry response above, you posed a rhetorical question, "did GEJ (Goodluck Ebele Jonathan) not try to do what BAT (Bola Ahmed Tinubu) has just done and the so-called progressives including Soyinka, a group with which BAT has long been associated with as part of the political opposition mobilized massively against him and he (GEJ) backed down?"

Firstly, President Jonathan never planned to remove fuel subsidy, rather what he proposed was an increase in pump price per litre for PMS (petrol) because of the high cost of fuel subsidy. Those opposed to the increase of pump price per litre pointed out that GEJ's government was subsidising rogues and not Nigerian consumers of PMS. Protesters, especially in Lagos were mauled down by Jonathan's security men, with death casualties. However, Jonathan raised the pump price of PMS from N65 to N97/litre and promised that the excess between N65 and N97 would be used for what he termed SURE-P (I think he named it Subsidy Re-Employment Programme). I leave to you to find out what happened to SURE-P.

Secondly, the new President of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has not presented any budget to yet to be inaugurated 10th National Assembly. It was the immediate past president who as from June 2023, did not include fuel subsidy in the budget submitted to, and approved, by the outgoing National Assembly. During Campaigns to February 25, 2023, Presidential election, both Atiku, Obi and Tinubu promised to abolish fuel subsidy, simply because they were all aware that Buhari's regime had already removed it from the Budget from June 2023. Thus, one can only claim that Bola Ahmed Tinubu ended fuel subsidy payments in Nigeria in 2023, unless one is a pathological liar.

S. Kadiri  

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Not interested 

You become President and announced a devastating transformation to the national economy and your supporters are claiming you are not responsible for the devastating policy change but are only announcing something you have no power over even though it’s an arrangement made by the President who respresents your party

If such an argument is to stand do you have any business in such a job managing the lives of the so many people who constitute a nation?

An argument which I understand is also being peddled by Festus Keyamo and which is one of the most destructive forms  of Tinubu defense possible 

Please stay on your lane 

I’m not interested 

Thanks

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/05674b11-c4c8-47bb-8b98-cfde192e99e8n%40googlegroups.com.

[ogunlakaiye]

You may be disinterested in facts, but as Aldous Huxley postulated, facts do not cease to exist because they are disregarded. The fact is that in 2012, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan proposed to hike pump price of petrol from N65/litre to N141/litre. He did not propose total withdrawal of fuel subsidy. Later on, he reduced the proposed hike from N141/litre to N97/Litre while promising that the difference between N65/l and N97 would be used for SURE-P. So, you were not being truthful when you wrote that GEJ wanted to remove fuel subsidy but he was opposed. Similarly, you are not being factual when you said that the new President, BAT, abolished fuel subsidy because budget for the year  2023 submitted by the immediate past President to the National Assembly and approved early this year had no provision for fuel subsidy beyond May 2023. Truthfully, Buhari removed fuel subsidy. Having stated those facts, I have no power to prevent those who have gone through personality-altering lobotomy not to be combatively living in denial of the obvious facts presented.

S. Kadiri   

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

 Is Nigeria's Political Class, Represented by the APC, an Agent of Dehumanizing Suffering for Nigerians?

Is Nigeria's Political Class, Represented by APC,  a Largely Parasitic Cause of Suffering for Nigerians?

Can Nigeria's political class, represented by the APC, be described as a party of dehumanizing suffering for Nigerians?

Can it be seen as  a party whose landmark dealings with the Nigerian populace defines a culture of attempting to dehumanize an already deeply deprived people?

A party creating a culture of suffering represented by the opening initiatives of the two Presidents they have so far produced, Muhammadu Buhari and Bola Ahmed Tinubu?

Is it a party creating a culture straining party supporters to invoke various kinds of whitewashing explanations for what may readily be understood as sheer inhumanity?


The Ascendancy of Terrorist Fulani Imperialism Enabled by the Buhari Govt

The Buhari government's history of suffering for Nigerians  was initiated by a slaughter of non-Fulani in Agatu in Nigeria's Middle Belt by Fulani militia associated with Fulani cattle herders.

         Miyetti Allah Fulani Organizations Justifications for Fulani Militia Terrorism Unresponded to            

         by the Buhari Govt and Unchallenged by Most Fulani

This massacre was openly owned and justified by Miyetti Allah, an umbrella name for two Fulani organisations composed of some of the most elite of Nigeria's Fulani, with one of them headed by the Sarduana of Sokoto, the foremost Northern Nigerian Muslim authority in a region where Islam is dominant and the then Emir of Kano and former Central Bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi.

Miyetti Allah was never responded to by the federal government of Muhammadu Buhari, talk less challenged and tried by law, even as they made their declarations in meetings with law enforcement agents and in defiance of outcries from Nigerians as this pattern continued for years of further massacres and a culture of extortion  in the Middle Belt and elsewhere for which Miyetti Allaha acted as the spokesperson justifying those massacres, and the Nigeria's Fulani largely kept silent, tried to mitigate views of the horror or even explained  the atrocities as not the fault of the herders and their militia, a private military  formation the existence of which the govt has never affirmed even as their operational history and scope of killings  has been openly mapped by various international groups monitoring global terrorism.

      Multiplication of Terrorist Initiatives by Fulani Criminal Groups

The Buhari govt was instead more visible in choosing silence on the massacres, unless strongly challenged, urging farmers to give up their land to herders rather than be killed, blaming victims for the massacres,making sure the killers were hardly or never apprehended, sentencing to death a  farmer who killed a Fulani herder as the herder struggled with the herder  on the farm and seeking to legitimize Fulani herders' claims to land across Nigeria through policy initiative, a state of orchestrated chaos that ballooned into the ascendancy of free ranging criminal groups often identified as Fulani, across Nigeria,  identified as Fulani even by such Fulani elite as the then governor of Kaduna State El Rufai and his Katsina counterpart,   ravagers who made kidnapping and murder a norm across Nigeria, and later concentrated themselves in the North, adding attacking elite military installations there, as the security forces proved unable to address a situation in which even the locations of the criminals were well known even as they remained untouchable.

The general consensus has been that these horrors are possible because  Buhari is Fulani, operating an administration known for extreme ethnocentric nepotism.

               The Lekki Toll Gate Massacre

Youth protesting police brutality at the Lekki toll gate escalated their protests to include peaceful demands for fundamental changes in how Nigeria is governed, moving from its current quasi-feudal structure to an equitable socio-economic system, a protest that drew the approval of authority figures from across the world, a threat to the political class, leading to the drafting of a military unit to the site, the shooting of the protesters and the removal of bodies by the army, with the army initially denying its presence at the site until forced to admit it through the release  of incriminating satellite images, upon which thy claimed they shot into the air.

                  Buhari Govt Naira Redesign Policy

Buhari's tenure concluded with a naira redesign policy that withdrew money from circulation during the elections, leading to devastations of Nigerians, and deaths of some people out of hunger on account of not being able to access money to buy food while some others went berserk, stripping themselves naked  in banks in  frustration at being unable to access their own monies. The administration claimed it withdrew money from circulation to prevent monetization of the  elections but those who bore the terrible brunt of the policy were the general populace.

These developments reinforced such negative economic developments of the Buhari era as the drastic fall in the value of the naira. 

Immediate Fuel Subsidy Removal

Buhari's successor and fellow APC politician is Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Tinubu's first major act was to initiate the removal of oil subsidies, a contentious program that has enabled Nigerians cope with energy needs in an underdeveloped economy with most Nigerians living in multi-dimensional poverty of poor electricity,  low incomes,  largely inadequate transportation systems, , access to water, good roads, health care, education and social justice.

This initiative plunged Nigerians into great suffering as the immediate rise prices of fuel led to scarcity of public  transportation and people being unable to drive their cars, as walking to one's destination became the order of the day, an outcome ironically anticipated by Tinubu's 2012 speech  arguing that removing oil subsidies was not realistic until major transportation and other infrastructural developments had been established in the country.

     Tinubu's  Oil Subsidy Suggestions before Becoming President in 2013

A Google search for ''Tinubu on Fuel Subsidy 2012'' brings up various responses presenting the development of APC and Tinubu's  orientations to this subject:

1. ''APC ‘Occupied Nigeria’ in 2012. What Changed Now That Tinubu Has Removed Subsidy'' a historical overview.

2. ''Don’t Dare Nigerians By Removing Fuel Subsidy, Same Move You Rejected During Jonathan’s Government, Labour Congress Tells President Tinubu'' a critical response to the new development, quoting Tinubu's 2012 speech arguing that  subsidy removal without correlative infrastructural  development  is disastrous.

3. ''Tinubu: Jonathan Has betrayed the people''- a January 2012 report of Tibunu's speech arguing for phased subsidy removal integrated with infrastructural development to enable Nigerians manage the economic fall out. 

4. ''Tinubu makes U-turn, wants fuel subsidy removed''- a 2015 report, the year APC came to power after removing the previous govt it had challenged on account of its efforts at eliminating fuel subsidy.

The report headlines Tinubu as changing his vision to the approach of immediate rather than phased and infrastructure building integrated subsidy removal.

The quotes from Tinubu, however, present him as stating 

“Let us begin a process of a thoughtful but decisive subsidy phase-out. While this is occurring, we should simultaneously phase in social programs benefiting the poorest, most vulnerable among us.

Programs such as transportation subsidies, school feeding, improved basic medical care and coverage for the poor, and potable water projects are some of the things that can be done with the funds.''

This is different from what he eventually presented in his inaugural speech as President in 2023.

What has changed?

Theories of Oil Subsidy Removal from the Nigerian Public 

          ''Tinubu Did not Remove Oil Subsidy. Buhari Did''

One argument is that Tinubu did not remove oil subsidy. It was done by his predecessor fellow  APC President Muhammadu Buhari and Tinubu has only announced the content of the budget he was presented with.

       Empowering Privileged Private Sector Oil Refining 

Another argument is that Tinubu/APC  are creating an enabling environment for privileged private sector refineries  launched by the newly commissioned new Aliko Dangote refinery, with another such privileged refinery  by a different investor also envisaged.

These are privileged because they enjoy the support of the govt unlike the modular refineries operated in the Niger Delta, the central source of Nigeria's oil, and which are illegal and dangerous on account of engireering inadequacies, from the little I  know  of this distinctively controversial technology and political angle of oil refining in Nigeria.

Positive responses to this view argue, as in Timothy Adekunle Seyi's response to comments on his Facebook post,  that even though the govt has been unable, across decades of successive govts and different political parties, to make its own refineries work, its enabling the Dangote refinery partly by being a shareholder in its is a way out of the crisis.

Negative responses argue that a political class that cannot make the nations refineries work, instead buying refined oil from abroad, creating the subsidy regime in the first place, is a predator political class for which the subsidy removal and the consequent empowerment of private sector investors in oil refining  is another avenue  for sharing monies among  themselves and their private sector enablers.

Dangote has been described as significantly benefiting from monopolistic practices  enabled by the fed govt run by  different parties and a recent presentation by his company  to the  fed govt on the oil accessibility scenario, as analysed by Aoiri Obaigbo in a Facebook post and thread,   is seen by Obaigbo  as pointing in the direction of another monopoly that would centre Dangote's company for financial  inflows from deprived Nigerians.

What is the Defining Philosophy of Nigeria's Political Elite, Represented by the APC?

The Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, sums up his vision, ''One thing I preach, brethren, now and always. Suffering and deliverance from suffering.''

The Buddha saw suffering as integral to the nature of the material universe. Things unavoidably change.   Yet the human being remains inflamed by  what is desired,  even as the desired undergoes change, becoming something different from what was once desired.

How to escape from this cycle? Remain steadfast within change while seeking what is beyond change. 

What is the APC philosophy, an expression of the philosophy of the Nigerian political class,  that leads to so much suffering for Nigerians?

How can this stranglehold be broken, given that most Nigerian politicians are cut from the same cloth, enjoy the same bloated revenues used in running the govt in a world in which they live in a vastly different economic universe from most Nigerians?

Its argued that the removal of oil subsidies means the money saved will be put into national development. 

Such promises have long been a staple of Nigeria's politicians, who cannot be described as generally making the electorate their primary consideration, given the scope of resources available to them and those which they arrogate to themselves.

What happens next as the new President inaugurates his tenure with suffering?

How will the resulting inflation be managed?

How will Nigerians cope?

What will be history's  verdict on APC and the Nigherian political class up to this year and beyond?

thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/4ab310b8-7189-49a5-b731-f1ab7041b6acn%40googlegroups.com.