Former Governor Rotimi Amaechi recently said one of the reasons that caused a friction between him and former President Ebele Jonathan was his opposition to subsidy to petrol importers that ballooned from N300 billion a year to N1.9 trillion. Amaechi was acting on behalf of the governors of the country then as leader of the informal association of governors forum. Dr. Jonathan by this time had been pocketed by the cabal of corrupt petrol traders who were also funding generously the PDP and enriching those in the corridor of power . The then president apparently realized at a point that there was something odd in a country spending more money on petrol subsidy than on development and wanted to do something about it. This led him to increase the pump price of petrol but did not have the backbone to resist public outcry and quickly reduced what he had been advised as the true price of gasoline.
The hostility of the public arose from their perception of the rampant corruption in the country. People felt they were not prepared to make sacrifice while the number of private jets was increasing daily. The president himself celebrated this as an index of prosperity in the land where Nigeria’s rebased GDP gave us the appearance of a rich country and rich people. His so-called coordinating minister of the economy was everywhere alluding to this manufactured achievement of economic prosperity to the discomfiture of the ordinary citizen. Stories were told of washermen, carpenters, garbage collectors being asked to fill forms that they were petrol importers and being subsequently paid billions of naira as subsidy. Young children of party bigwigs became billionaires overnight.
This jamboree went on for years until the country nearly went bankrupt following low price of crude oil in the world market forcing the corrupt government to shine some light on the oil imports sector. It found many people culpable and made some noise and took some people to court including party top dogs or their children but it was all motion without movement for no one has been convicted neither has money been recovered. To make matters worse, some of the people involved also ruined some of the country’s banks while the huge foreign reserves Obasanjo left was drawn down on subsiding this corrupt fuel importation. This is how we got to this juncture of broken down four refineries and huge importation of refined fuel which is an embarrassing situation for an oil producing country. The subsidy guzzlers were not interested in functioning refineries. They also never thought of selling the refineries as part of their market driven economic reforms. Obasanjo had gotten private operators interested in buying some of the run down refineries but they preferred the so-called annual turn around contracts award for the refineries. As usual these contracts went to party hacks who knew nothing about refineries. Instead of calling on those who built the refineries to rehabilitate them they gave the contracts to traders who simply pocketed the huge amounts given them while making some donations to the ruling party. They did this annually with impunity damning the people especially those with conscience to protest or go to hell.
Now change has hopefully come and we hope and pray that things will change for the better. President Buhari has cautiously said he will not rush to take a decision on oil subsidy. He said he will study the situation first. But it is clear from the several studies done and advice by experts and friendly countries and development partners that that the oil subsidy and the oil sector generally constitute the bedrocks of corruption in Nigeria. We cannot be talking of fighting corruption while dilly-dallying on the oil subsidy issue.
If the president does not strike while the iron is hot, subsidy beneficiaries with their enormous resources will mobilize to ensure the failure of its removal. Surprise is a well known military strategy and this president with his huge goodwill should make up his mind quickly. Besides in the last two months, most Nigerians have been buying fuel at deregulated prices ranging from 100 to 130 naira a litre. If this is the price to pay to release money going into subsidy for development we should be prepared to pay it. Imagine what two or three trillion naira that was being spent for subsidy by the Jonathan government can do for the development of this country. Delaying a decision on this issue may haunt us in the years to come especially if this government allows the oil oligarchs to mobilize against subsidy removal. The right policy is deregulation.
Let the market determine the right and correct price of gasoline and let all who feel they can make profit engage in fuel importation and sell all the refineries at give away price to oil companies engaged in oil production in Nigeria or if they are not willing to buy them, sell them to those who can run them but certainly not party people and preferably to foreign investors and I repeat at a give-away price of even a dollar provided the buyers promise to put them back into oil refining.
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