By Sunny Awhefeada
The Nigerian politician’s predilection for not calling a spade a spade was at play last Sunday when President Bola Tinubu spoke at the Special World Economic Forum in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Tinubu’s submission on the reason why petroleum subsidy was removed linking it with Nigeria’s imminent bankruptcy once again casts doubt on his claims to statesmanship.
Anybody who aspires to the presidency of a nation must be of the stature of a statesman whose every word can be taken to the bank. Such a personage should not only be profoundly knowledgeable, but should have the courage and conviction to speak the truth and take decisive action when occasion calls for it. Sadly, and painfully so, the Nigerian experience of leadership falls below the expectation of what it really ought to be. So, when our political leaders see a snake, they call it an earthworm and look the other way while the helpless masses suffer the consequences of the serpent’s venomous bite. While other world leaders saw the summit as an opportunity to initiate resourceful conversations that will boost their nations’ economic fortunes, Nigeria’s President Tinubu saw it as a platform to beat his chest in self-praise and ascribe petroleum subsidy removal to the need to prevent the nation’s looming bankruptcy. Here is an attempt at not only manipulating the narrative, but also hoodwinking the world as to what has been playing out in Nigeria in the last twenty years or so. What Nigeria needs right now is altruism and not euphemism. What was and is still driving Nigeria down the horrible and dangerous slope of bankruptcy is not subsidy, but unbridled corruption. Tinubu knows this!
Tinubu told the audience that; “Concerning the question of subsidy removal, there is no doubt that it was a necessary action for my country not to go bankrupt, and to reset the economy and the pathway to growth”. Many people in the audience who are familiar with the Nigerian narrative would chuckle and simply say “please, tell us something else”. Subsidy does not drive nations to bankruptcy. It is economic mismanagement, corruption and visionless leadership that create the ground for bankruptcy. Subsidy is an economic regime that operates in almost every nation of the world. Most governments have cause to subsidize one item or the other in order to make life more meaningful for their citizens. Such items as energy, agriculture, health, education, housing, among others enjoy one form of subsidy or the other across the world and governments take pride in pointing at such subsidies as part of their achievements. In such sane climes, the subsidies are targeted mostly at the vulnerable segment of the demography. Unfortunately, the bogey of corruption negated the essence of subsidy in Nigeria and turned the gesture into a cash cow for the ruling class who milk and milk the nation dry.
The truth Tinubu ought to have told his Riyadh audience was that subsidy was removed because it became a massive drain pipe that haemorrhaged Nigeria’s body politic for years. The corruption that attended the subsidy regime was enough to crumble the economies of many other countries of the world if that level of heist had taken place there. Therefore, rather than attribute the removal of petroleum subsidy to imminent bankruptcy, Tinubu should have come out to confess that the class to which he belongs had turned the subsidy regime into a massive avenue for unprecedented corruption that was leading Nigeria to economic doom. And whose duty is it to check corruption? It is the same class that is perpetuating it! And those who know have put a lie to Tinubu’s subsidy removal claim. They allege that it has been smuggled in through the window and that subsidy remains active in reality. So, who is the present government fooling?
The subsidy removal story has a twist of irony to it. Recalling an instance in the string of ironies attending to the subsidy experience in Nigeria is enough to confine those running the nation at the moment to a moral jailhouse. In 2012, the regime of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan toyed with the idea of removing petroleum subsidy alleging, and truly so, that it was fuelling corruption and pauperizing the very people whose economic plight it was meant to ameliorate. The government organized debates and town hall meetings that were intended to take the message to the people and other relevant stakeholders. Much as the government tried to pass its message across, the opposition elements of that era who are today the lords of Aso Rock mounted a fierce campaign to pooh-pooh the government’s position on why petroleum subsidy should be removed. The opposition elements rallied people from all shades, paid musicians, sponsored speakers and provided food and drinks in what became “occupy Lagos” experience. The government, afraid that the scenario could metamorphose into Nigeria’s version of the “Arab Spring”, allowed the subsidy regime to remain and everybody went home.
The capitulation of Goodluck Jonathan’s government to the antics of the then opposition elements who are now in power reflects the moral burden of acute lack of altruism on the part of the latter. What changed that necessitated the change of subsidy policy especially at the very moment and on the very day Tinubu’s government was inaugurated? If subsidy removal was desirable for Nigeria’s economic wellbeing, were Tinubu and his co-travellers just realizing it? Didn’t the act speak to acute sincerity deficit and chicanery, two elements that are deleterious to nation building? Here then is the huge moral burden the Tinubu presidency has to contend with. Fortunately for the presidency and unfortunately for Nigerians, we have become a people suffering from ennui without the least capacity to call out our oppressors.
President Tinubu’s submission in Riyadh is an indictment of the Nigerian people and an unspoken absolution of his class. If he ascribed subsidy removal to the need to save Nigeria from bankruptcy, it meant that we the people are wasteful and only consume and consume and do nothing to add value to Nigeria. His silence on the corrupt tendencies that define subsidy tacitly absolves his class populated by exploiters and profiteers. Yet, it was the larceny perpetrated by his class that brought Nigeria to near insolvency. Nigeria has been hijacked by wheeler-dealers. The choice that we need to make as a people is a hard one. In fact the opportunity for that choice is not in sight. As a people that have suffered exploitation and oppression for so long, we have not been mobilized around an ideal or idea. Those we thought were prophets of a new dawn and deal have turned out to be profiteers waiting to join the table. This is the reason we have not evolved a national ideal built on popular consensus to engender a national rebirth.
Those who should dream stubborn dreams and point Nigeria in a new direction have lost sleep and no longer have the capacity to dream. They are groping and have sunk into inanity. The present administration promised Nigerians “renewed hope”, but it has so far offered no hope. What the regime’s henchmen told us were going to be the gains of petroleum subsidy removal have become acute pains. Poverty has become inveterate and access to education, health and other amenities daily recede beyond the reach of the people. The removal of subsidy has favoured only the politically powerful who could pay seven hundred and twenty thousand dollars in school fees for their children in secondary school. That money could have built forty state of the art secondary schools for some of the millions of out of school children in Nigeria. This is what is driving Nigeria to bankruptcy and not subsidy.
