The controversy about the removal or not of fuel subsidy is on again. Some stakeholders, probably acting for the powers that be, raked it up recently. The Presidency says, however, that it has no plan to do that. But the truth remains that the President Goodluck Jonathan administration, like many others before it, relies on the revenue from the nation’s oil and gas sector for survival. Once there is a hiccup in the economy, which is often the product of funds misapplication, fraud, outright embezzlement and all manner of public sector corruption, the government goes for nothing else but making it up with ordinary Nigerians on the wrong side by hiking the pump head prices of petroleum products, an act dressed as fuel subsidy removal.
Before the embarrassing January 1, 2012 Federal Government’s gift to Nigerians, for example, a meeting between organised labour and President Jonathan over his proposed removal of fuel subsidy ended in a deadlock in Abuja. Labour leaders, we recall, insisted that the removal will be injurious to Nigerians. But the FG claimed the actual cost of petrol was N139 per litre. It said all Nigerians were beneficiaries of fuel subsidy, but that the rich benefitted the more. The FG claimed then that the N65 per litre price of fuel (as at 2011) was so cheap that it encouraged the smuggling of PMS (Premium Motor Spirit) through the country’s borders.
The truth was, however, confirmed after the January 2012 nationwide fuel subsidy removal protests and the ensuing investigation by the House of Representatives of the looting of the nation’s coffers in the name of fuel subsidy in connivance with oil sector managers. The rest is now history. But Nigerians know that President Jonathan, the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister for the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, and the Petroleum Resources Minister, Mrs. Diezani Alison Madueke, appear more interested in confounding Nigerians with all manner of hypotheses about the oil sector than repairing the nation’s refineries or building new ones, so that ordinary citizens can at least benefit from their God-given oil resources. Hardly do they consider the consequences of frequent oil price increases on less privileged citizens. Indeed, but for the real sector and the toiling of ordinary Nigerians on daily basis to survive, it is like no government exists in the land.
At present, the official price of a litre of PMS is said to be N97. But that is on paper. In parts of Lagos, the product can be bought at that price. But in far-flung places like the eastern and northern parts of the country, PMS sells for N120 and above per litre. The price of kerosene, the basic source of energy in most homes apart from coal or fire wood, is also higher. As we speak, the Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P) which the FG embraced to pacify Nigerians on its unjustified increase of the pump head price of fuel on January 1, 2012 has not scratched the surface of the problems of youth unemployment and empowerment in the country. Still, government’s agenda setters are flying the kite of another so-called total fuel subsidy removal.
Nigerians are told by the FG that the price of fuel is cheapest in the country even at the deceitful N97 per litre price. But researchers say the product sells for N3.61 in Venezuela that maintains a minimum wage of N95, 639; in Kuwait that pays N161, 461 as minimum wage, fuel sells for N34,54 per litre. In Saudi Arabia, where the minimum wage is N99, 237, fuel is sold for N25.12. Iran sells fuel for N102.05 per litre and has a minimum wage of N86, 585.
All these countries are members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), where Nigeria also belongs. But in the case of Nigeria, the real least price of a litre of fuel in most parts of the country is N120 and the minimum wage is N18, 000. Indeed not all the 36 states in the country have been able to pay the N18, 000 minimum wage approved by the FG since 2011. On what basis then is the Jonathan government or its agents dreaming about yet another increase in the pump head price of petroleum products in the name of total fuel subsidy removal? How justified is it for a government to always demand sacrifices from its citizens when it is not able to fulfill the basic security delivery services and meet the welfare needs of the people?
Arm chair criticism will never build Nigeria
Nobody is confounding Nigerians about the removal of fuel subsidy. It is one way to plug leakages and stop colossal waste of resources.
The government is interested in the welfare of Nigerians, especially the apparently less privileged. That is why schemes that are being hijacked by a few to impoverish the majority must be curtailed. Fuel subsidy is one of such.