Buhari’s Growing Cruelty Reflects the Wishes of Nigerians

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

Saturday, September 5, 2020

Buhari’s Growing Cruelty Reflects the Wishes of Nigerians

By Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

The All Progressives Congress (APC) subsists on lies and deceit, like its twin the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), but the party told a fundamental truth on September 2 when it said in a statement, according to the Sun, that Buhari’s “hiked petrol price, electricity tariff reflect [the] wishes of [the] citizenry.”

This may come across as a bit counter-intuitive, but there is no greater testimonial endorsement of the claim that Buhari’s steep, sudden hikes in the prices of commodities, which have made Nigeria a snake pit of infernal cruelty, reflect the wishes of Nigerians than the fact that there have been no protests against the policies.

From the 1960s until Buhari ascended to the presidency, every hike in petrol price had been greeted with massive protests. But not only have there been no protests against Buhari’s punishing petrol price hikes, a whole lot of people in the North actually came out in 2016 to stage demonstrations in support of Buhari’s first petrol price increment and against opposition to it!

In 2012 when the Goodluck Jonathan administration arbitrarily hiked the pump price of petrol, I was the first to suggest an “Occupy Nigeria” strategy to force the government to reverse the hike. I didn’t anticipate that my suggestion would fly. But it did. It meshed with the self-interested political agendas of people who are now in government and ignited a massive social convulsion.

Four years later in 2016, I made the same appeal. But as I pointed out in my May 14, 2016 column titled, “Petrol Price Hike: Time to Occupy Nigeria Again,” the people and circumstances that conduced to the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protests had changed.

“But I doubt that my appeal will resonate with many people this time around; President Buhari’s tight emotional grip on the northern and southwestern middle class would likely frustrate the formation of the kind of remarkably unexampled pan-Nigerian solidarity that confronted former President Jonathan,” I wrote.

Well, sheepish acquiescence in the face of Buhari’s plot to transform Nigeria into one massive mass grave through thoughtless and callous hikes in the prices of everything that is essential to survival is proof that the APC is right to insist that Buhari’s morally objectionable suffocation of Nigeria reflects the wishes of Nigerians.

I made these points four years ago, and I will repeat them because the circumstances warrant their repetition: Every responsible, socially sensitive government subsidizes essential commodities for its citizens. It is only Nigerian governments that interminably tell their citizens that they have no responsibility to make life a little easier for the people they govern.

According to a January 3, 2012 TIME Magazine story titled “Petrol Politics: Why Nigerians Are Enraged Over the Rising Price of Gasoline,” America’s 50 states collectively spend $10 billion a year to subsidize the fuel consumption of their citizens.

 In America, with all its vast material prosperity, the surest way for any government to collapse irretrievably is to encourage any policy that causes the price of petrol to go up.  As TIME put it beautifully, “One of the fastest ways to alienate voters is to be seen supporting anything that intensifies pain in the pump.” 

It said, “politicians’ refusal to increase gas taxes in line with inflation and construction costs starves needed infrastructure of funding.” Sounds familiar? The recurrent excuse governments in Nigeria advance to increase fuel prices is that the government needs money for “infrastructural development.”

 But no sensible government starves its people to death because it wants to build infrastructure. Only the living use infrastructure.

There is an instructive example in the Midwestern state of Iowa of how a caring government, faced with a cash crunch, responded to recommendations for an increase in petrol prices to raise money. I will reproduce parts of the story, which is from TIME, without authorial intervention:

“In Iowa, which hasn’t raised its tax in 22 years, a citizen advisory panel recommended an 8 cent to 10 cent bump per gallon in November. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad quickly took any increase off the table, instead asking his Department of Transportation to look for savings.

“‘Everyone realizes that we need more funding for roads and bridges,’ said Tim Albrecht, a spokesman for Branstad. ‘I don’t think the legislature was especially willing to put a burden on Iowa’s taxpayers at this time.’”

Governments don’t save in Nigeria. All they do is raid the national treasury to subsidize their lavish lifestyles (and those of their cronies) and tell the masses of the people that they don’t deserve any subsidy. Nigeria isn’t poor because of the need of its people; it is in dire straits because of the greed of its elites.

But everyday Nigerians who feel the pinch of the cruelty of their elites would rather expend their energies to fight for God than fight for themselves. The same Nigerians who fly into a tempestuous holy rage and demand the blood of their fellow humans when their God is “blasphemed” are asking for their God’s intervention— instead of acting— now that Buhari is determined to kill them piecemeal through cruel hikes in the prices of everything essential to their existence.

They kill fellow humans in defense of their God but ask God to defend them against an oppressor who is killing them by other means—and looking the other way while kidnappers and terrorists periodically murder them in the hundreds.

If you have the capacity to defend God, shouldn’t you have an even greater capacity to defend yourself against murderous oppressors since self-preservation is said to be the first law of nature? Or is “God-preservation” and self-annihilation the first law of nature in Nigeria?

If God, with his omnipotent powers, can’t deal with blasphemers on his own but needs your defense, why and how do you think he can defend you against a man who is—-or people who are— smoldering you?

Nigerians aren’t victims of Buhari; they’re willing participants in and enablers of his vicious asphyxiation of Nigeria. There’s nothing that he’s doing now that he hasn’t been doing since at least 2016. Read my past columns: you’d think they were written in response to Nigeria’s current existential torments.

For instance, on December 6, 2016, I wrote: “I used to say that it was impossible for any Nigerian president to be worse than Jonathan…. So in May 2015, I started out investing enormous hopes in Buhari to transform Nigeria and to build enduring institutions.

“After waiting 6 months to appoint a predictable, lackluster cabinet, it became clear to me that my hopes were misplaced, that Buhari wasn’t prepared to be president, so I scaled backed my expectations and hoped that Buhari would at least be minimally better than Jonathan.

“But when Buhari hiked fuel prices, reversed the few crumbling subsidies that sustained the poor, and became a prisoner of the ‘Washington Consensus,’ I scaled back my expectations again and hoped that Buhari would be just as bad as Jonathan was.

“When his government’s incredibly inept husbandry of the economy continued to deepen the recession it instigated in the first place with its wrongheaded policies, I hoped that Buhari would just be slightly worse than Jonathan for the sake of Nigeria’s survival.

“Now with the unceasing rash of counter-intuitive, mutually contradictory, insanely irrational, and thoughtless policy prescriptions from this government, the very foundation of the country is tanking before our very eyes, and I just hope Buhari never does anything again till 2019 when his tenure will expire—and with it the torment he is inflicting on Nigeria. A stagnant, do-nothing Buhari is now better for the country than this madness we’re witnessing! Nigeria is fast sinking to the nadir of despair and ruination.”

Nothing has changed. Nigerians can only show that their plight isn’t a reflection of their wishes if they damn the consequences and fight the source of their misery.

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

well done Farooq, for your unceasing efforts

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​I have just started Part V of my, Arise O Nigerians, in which I reflected on President Goodluck Jonathan's fuel subsidy crises and subsequent enquiries that exposed the gigantic thievery of public funds being subsidized. Since Professor Farooq Kperogi is out to strut like a peacock again, I am compelled to react to this self-adulating assertion by him : In 2012 when the Goodluck Jonathan administration arbitrarily hiked the pump price of petrol, I was the first to suggest an "Occupy Nigeria" strategy to force the government to reverse the hike. I didn't anticipate that my suggestion would fly. Neither Jonathan in 2012 nor Buhari in 2020 should be blamed for hiking pump price of petrol in a crude oil exporting Nigeria with four crude oil refineries but has to depend on imported fuel for her domestic needs.

We have created in Nigeria abundance of ministries and parastatals to solve every imaginable socio-economic and industrial problems in our country. We have experts and specialists employed and well remunerated at Federal, State and local government levels to exhibit their expertise, which they claim to possess, to solve our nation's industrial and economic problems. However, Nigerian intellectual experts and specialists only collect salaries and allowances every month just to impose backward ever and forward never conditions of life on the people of Nigeria.

When Jonathan in 2012 proposed to hike the cost of pump price of petrol from N65 to N141 per litre, the pump price per litre in Venezuela was N2 and 20 kobo, in Iraq it was N4 and 30 kobo, and in South Africa which had no crude oil in her soil, the pump price of petrol was N23 and 30 kobo. The absurdity of the pump price of petrol in Nigeria and government's subsidy on it can best be understood when it is known that Nigeria has four (4) crude oil refineries, situated in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna, with all of them receiving together 445,000 barrels of crude oil daily from the NNPC. Since a barrel is equal to 159 litres, even a professor of English should be able to compute the simple arithmetic, that Nigeria's crude oil refineries collect/receive 70 million, 755 thousand (70,755,000) litres of crude oil per day from NNPC to refine for internal consumption. Apart from diesel, bitumen, kerosine and some other chemical products, the Nigerian refineries working at installed capacities would be producing 40,000,000 (40 million) litres of petrol per day according to experts in Petro-Chemical engineering. At the House of Reps investigation on fuel subsidy led by Farouk Lawan, in 2012, the Executive Secretary of Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulating Agency (PPPRA), Reginald Stanley, told the Committee that the daily consumption of petrol in Nigeria at that time was, 24,000,000 (24 million) although government was paying for 59 million imported fuel daily which implied fraudulent payments of 35 million litres ghost fuel imported fuel per day.

What serious-minded Nigerians, whether literate or not, should be asking are, why are Nigerian refineries unproductive and what has been happening to the 70,755,000 litres of crude oil allocated to them daily? As at 2012, Singapore had no crude oil in her territory but she had 34 refineries through which she was exporting refined products from imported crude oil. Sudan that was war torn in 2012 had four functional refineries producing 181,000 barrels of petrol per day. The Democratic Republic of Congo as at 2012 had a refinery that was churning out 21, 000 barrels of petrol per day. Ghana had only one refinery built in 1963, and which was two years older than the oldest Nigerian refinery at Oloibiri, but still functioning in 2012 and Ghanaians were neither talking of fuel subsidy nor sleeping at the petrol station to get their vehicles filled. What Farooq can help Nigerians with is to help them identify the intellectual fraudsters at the Nigerian crude oil refineries who collect 445,000 barrels of crude oil per day without refining any crude oil and at the same time collecting salaries and fringe benefits every month for undelivered products to Nigerians. For reasons best known to Farooq, he has decided to leave leprosy to chase ringworm. Thus, should Buhari decide to sack all those intellectual fraudsters at the Nigerian crude oil refineries today, Farooq Kperogi and his cohorts would be the first people to brand him, Buhari, a dictator.

S. Kadiri 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>
Sent: 06 September 2020 06:01
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Buhari’s Growing Cruelty Reflects the Wishes of Nigerians

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CALUsqTSbKQDotkKxvJfZQr7qvuJ-nUPnYPz%2ByMT1w5kA5fPwuA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Oga Salimonu,

I eagerly read your response to Farooq.

Sadly, you have failed to disappoint me.

Your Friend at the Top, who was chosen to Lead from the Front in the war against Boko Haram, being a retired army general, chose instead, in addition to being President, to make himself petroleum minister.

What Farooq is stating is that such Leadership from the Front on the vexed petroleum problem should have led to answering the questions you asked and resolving the relevant problems.

Some mischievous people are of the view that his adding the petroleum ministry to his already huge job as President had nothing to do with problem solving but everything to do with positioning oneself for drinking direct from the source of Nigeria's oil wealth.

So, here we are today.

Are those mischievous people's views not looking increasingly credible?

Boko Haram, still raging.

Refineries, problematic.

Importation of fuel-still a mainstay of the economy.

Did your Oga at the Top have no plan to remedy these issues?

Why should he need you to deflect criticism from him?

Has he tried to sack the fraudsters and failed or had people crying agst him?

Why should he need you to manufacture an excuse for his failure for him?

toyin

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[Femi Segun]

I wonder o.

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Chief Oluwatoyin,

Even though I know that intellectual mystics and sorcerers only care about effects and not causes of events, I will always endeavour to expose causes of the socio-economic and industrial problems of Nigeria to find solutions. You cannot expect the President in a democratic setting to dictate functional crude-oil refineries and constant electricity. It is for that reason that I exonerated, your South-South brother and former President, Goodluck Jonathan, from the guilt of petrol pump price hike of 2012. President comes and goes, but the Permanent Secretaries and Directors in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies always remain. Unless the President decides to be rough by taking extra-judicial steps to deal with plunderers of the nation's wealth, there is no way he can get at the crooks in the crude oil refineries and other places in Nigeria. In October 2016, when Buhari caused the DSS to raid the homes of certain Justices of the High- and Supreme Courts, suspected of auctioning Justice in exchange for money, large sums of money in foreign and local currencies were recovered. Remembering Oluwatoyin's reaction to the raid and monies found on this forum then, he insinuated that the monies found in the Judges' home were planted there by the DSS. However, when the Judges claimed that the huge cash of foreign and local currencies found in their homes actually belonged to them, with some of them claiming that they earned the monies from sales of palm oil and rice, Oluwatoyin remained mute. 

Boko Haram is still raging because current Service Chiefs can see that yesterday's profiteers of Boko Haram war are set free by the Courts to enjoy life in abundance after returning a negligible part of their war profits to the country. I can neither deflect criticism against Buhari nor manufacture excuse to explain dysfunctional crude oil refineries in Nigeria since it is obvious that your intellectual colleagues who claim to be experts and specialists in crude oil refinery are employed and highly renumerated to enhance their optimal performance are incapable of refining 445,000 barrels of crude oil, allocated to them daily by the NNPC. The problem of fuel supply in Nigeria is apparently caused by Chief Oluwatoyin's intellectual colleagues who are in charge of Nigeria's crude oil refineries but are not refining any crude oil. The only solution to that problem as I see it is for the National Assembly to enact law(s) without delay which shall make it possible for Buhari to throw out fraudulent elements from vital institutions of socio-economic and industrial development in Nigeria, including the useless crude oil refiners in the nation's refineries.

S. Kadiri

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Femi Segun <solor...@gmail.com>
Sent: 08 September 2020 03:45
To: 'Chika Onyeani' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Great thanks, Salimonu.

Since your Friend at the Top has no strategy to address the challenges he was elected to address, even after more than 4 years in office and many years of trying and failing to get the job until he got it at last, on the platform of support from the SW, Boko Haram terrorism induced disenchantment and threats of blood flowing if he lost, are you willing to support his impeachment?

I am convinced I can do a better job.

Will you support me?

toyin

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[OLAYINKA AGBETUYI]

Toyin Adepoju.

You have not failed to disappoint me in your usual response to Alagba Kadiri's nuanced well analysed  response to those misrepresenting the nature of Nigerian problems.

What evidence have you to back the 'mischievous people' that Buhari placed himself at the petroleum ministry to drink directly from the source of Nigeria's oil wealth?  

How well did Obasanjo, YarAdua and Jonathan solve the problem that it persists till today?

Is it not a fact that every government since Babangida has been misled to think there is a ' subsidy' on Nigeria oil which needs to be removed to facilitate governance?  Which government has not fallen for this bait designed to put money in the pockets of technocrats and their fronts (carefully analysed by Baba Kadiri) at the expense of ordinary Nigerians?

Should we all not just stop this silly business of snapping at each other and collectively demand that the oil pricing regime revert back to the status quo ante of pre- Babangida corrupted days?

Why for instance as Baba Kadiri clearly demonstrates is Singapore not using the same gratuitous argument of ' subsidy to defraud its own people.

Can I ask you again to stop seeing all of the Nigerian problems from the monocular anti- Buhari monocle.  So Buhari is not perfect;  what else have you to offer us beyond that habitual mantra?  How more perfect were his predecessors?

Go ahead and instigate a Buhari impeachment crusade at the barricades if you dare!  Soyinka would do just that in his hayday when he was your age if he felt the way you felt about Buhari.

We are looking forward to seeing you at the National Assembly.

OAA

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

-------- Original message --------

From: Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Date: 07/09/2020 11:26 (GMT+00:00)

To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Buhari’s Growing Cruelty Reflects the Wishes of Nigerians

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Oga Salimonu,

I eagerly read your response to Farooq.

Sadly, you have failed to disappoint me.

Your Friend at the Top, who was chosen to Lead from the Front in the war against Boko Haram, being a retired army general, chose instead, in addition to being President, to make himself petroleum minister.

What Farooq is stating is that such Leadership from the Front on the vexed petroleum problem should have led to answering the questions you asked and resolving the relevant problems.

Some mischievous people are of the view that his adding the petroleum ministry to his already huge job as President had nothing to do with problem solving but everything to do with positioning oneself for drinking direct from the source of Nigeria's oil wealth.

So, here we are today.

Are those mischievous people's views not looking increasingly credible?

Boko Haram, still raging.

Refineries, problematic.

Importation of fuel-still a mainstay of the economy.

Did your Oga at the Top have no plan to remedy these issues?

Why should he need you to deflect criticism from him?

Has he tried to sack the fraudsters and failed or had people crying agst him?

Why should he need you to manufacture an excuse for his failure for him?

toyin

On Sun, 6 Sep 2020 at 18:49, Salimonu Kadiri <ogunl...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

Please forgive me oga Agbetuyi.

I suffered from the illusion that Your Friend at the Top was elected to solve long lingering problems, not protest his helplessness before them,  invoking the inadequacies of his predecessors.

I was misled by the election mantras of ''the Incorruptible'', ''the General'', ''he of total discipline'' ''the cleanser'' and other stated or implied recommendations of Your Friend at the Top.

Since you argue its the same old story we should expect, made much worse in my view by a terrorist govt, who am I to disagree with you?

Great thanks for your goodwill for me in politics. I shall run as an Independent Candidate. We need people free of allegiance to godfathers and other crippling alliances.

We also need to rework the rules for political campaigning so as to remove the culture of hugely expensive  nomination forms candidates are made to buy by political parties, contributing to turning the political process into a financial investment to be fraudulently recouped on entering office. 

Great thanks, brother.

toyin

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[Salimonu Kadiri]

​Chief Oluwatoyin,

Your question about if I would support your election as the next President of Nigeria would deserve an answer when you have fulfilled the constitutional requirements stated in Section 65 (2b) of the 1999 Constitution as amended. For the sake of clarity, you must belong to a political party which must sponsor your contest in an election. 

S. Kadiri

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin....@gmail.com>

Sent: 08 September 2020 17:53

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[Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju]

thanks Salimonu.

we need to change that requirement.

do  the dominant political parties at present in nigerian politics represent any ideological vision?

we need independents who can run without parties

yes, one can form one's own party, but the field needs to be widened to include a broader range of ways of doing politics

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