One Blow Seven Die
VIEW FROM THE GALLERY
With the possible exception of insecurity, nothing makes Nigerian hearts to beat faster than the prospect of fuel price increase. Labour leaders’ hearts, especially, double and triple their beat at the very mention of fuel price hike. It is both a fear and an opportunity because since the 1980s, labour movement has positioned itself as the champion of low petrol prices. Its attempt to mobilise Nigerians to protest a hike in 2016 failed woefully because the Buhari Administration was still popular. Big Labour has been in decline since then, so this looming price hike could be its God-sent opportunity to bounce back to reckoning.
In the past week there is near-panic across Nigeria since NNPC’s Group Managing Director Mele Kolo Kyari hinted that petrol could sell for between N320 and N340 from February 2022.Although government huffed and puffed for many years about its intention to deregulate petrol prices, this time it looks like it is for real. [This is for real, one popular James Hadley Chase title].
Many Nigerians prayed that Finance Minister Zainab Ahmed would contradict the
GMD, as top government officials often do. In the event, she not onlycorroborated what he said, but she indicated that government was already thinking of a palliative measure, under which money will be doled out to the poorest citizens to cushion the expected effects of the petrol price hike.
Looks like Nigerians were saying a blind prayer. Everyone was exasperated that Petroleum Industry Bill [PIB] was legislatively stuck for two decades.Widespread sighs of relief greeted its passing into law in July. The President assented to it andset up a committee to implement it, with a short time span to finish the job in order to make up for lost time. Now, most Nigerians are hearing for the first time that the Act leaves no room for subsidies. If they knew that, they would have urged MPs to stalemate the bill for another generation. When NNPC becomes a fully commercial entitynext year, it can no longer divert money from crude oil sales, import millions of litres of petrol every day for domestic consumption, which Government forces it to sell at fixed prices, so it suffers an “under recovery” of hundreds of billions of naira a year.
Someone must pay for that.The ecologist
Barry Commoner once said “everything must go somewhere” and “there is nothing like dinner without paying the price.”This “under-recovery” shortchanges theFederation Account to the tune of N1.8 trillion this year, all so that we can jump into our buses and cars and move around at a relatively low cost. Looks like the day of reckoning has arrived.
The unfolding conundrum over the impending, final withdrawal of petrol subsidy in Nigeria reminds me of the story of a judge who had to adjudicate in a complicated dispute. The complainant spoke so eloquently that when he finished, the judge involuntarily said, “You are telling the truth.” The respondent protested that his own side of the story was not heard. He turned out to be just as eloquent as the complainant and when he finished, the judge said, “You are also telling the truth.”
A spectator at the trial then jumped to his feet and said, “Judge, you said the first man was telling the truth. What the second man said totally contradicted the first man and you again said he was telling the truth. It is not possible for both of them to be telling the truth.” The judge looked at the third man, sighed and said, “You are also telling the truth.”
Imagine Government officials to be the complainant in this case. They have been saying for many years, with some eloquence, that it is the rich, not the poor, that enjoy fuel subsidy the most because they havethe most vehicles. A poor Nigerian man thinks he benefitted by buying 5 litres of cheap petrol for his motorcycle when the other man at the pump just bought 200 litres for his Toyota Tundra at the same price. They also argue that if that money goes to Federation Account, it could build a lot of infrastructural, health, educational and other facilities. Petrol, they also said, is cheaper in Nigeria than in every other West and Central African country, hence it is smuggled across the borders to all our neighbours and far beyond.
Besides, they say, price of diesel which fuels trucks, trailers, tankers, tippers, tractors and generators was deregulated long ago. So also kerosene, fuel of choice for majority of households, and also cooking gas, so why not petrol? Government officials recently