By Femi Orebe
This one making the third week in succession, the subject discussed, majorly, on this column was that of reducing the cost of governance in Nigeria with the National Assembly flagged as the chief culprit in the stupendous profligacy.
Given that fact, what are Nigerians expected to make of the N70B allocated to members of the same National Assembly in the newly approved supplementary budget especially when viewed against the claim once made by Mrs Ngozi Okonjo- Iweala, the twice Nigerian former minister of Finance?
In her book, ‘Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines’, she revealed the arm-twisting that characterised budget passage by the National Assembly during the Goodluck Jonathan administration, referencing an event in 2015, when its leadership COERCED the executive arm to part with a whooping N17 billion added to the year’s budget before it was passed.
In interrogating the new fuel pump prices, it is important to appropriately situate who, or what, to hold responsible for the infliction of this extreme hardship on Nigerians. Unfortunately, being mostly of short memory, many Nigerians may not think of linking the development to former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s cancellation of history in Nigerian schools whereas, the clever militician was only being proactive knowing, well in advance, that there was no way Nigerians could avoid suffering the whirlwind of the wind which PDP sowed during its 16 year – stranglehold over Nigeria which, among other things, included spending 16 billion dollars, procuring darkness, in place of electricity, for hapless Nigerians.
Tinubu’s implacable foes would be eager to put the blame squarely on his less than 2- month old administration which, in future, would be commended for demonstrating the political will, even bravado, lack of which saw President Goodluck Jonathan beat a hasty retreat when in 2012 he attempted to remove fuel subsidy, and ended up postponing the evil day. Now it has caught up with us.
For me, Nigerians are unjustly suffering the consequences of corruption in all spheres of our past governments – Executive, legislative and the judiciary – all of which combined to worsen everything concerning fuel: its production (how our four refineries were bastardised through poor, or non- existent, turn – around maintenance especially in the Obasanjo years), importation (fraudulent subsidy payments) and how the judiciary shielded oil fraudsters who claimed billions of Naira in subsidy payments, even on ships which never visited anywhere on the West African coast.
The last ( Judiciary) led Femi Falana, SAN to, not too long ago, write as follows:”The menace of corruption is compounded by the impunity of the ruling class. It is, therefore, pertinent to join issues with the lawyers who are being used to frustrate the anti-corruption war. Although the NBA condemns corruption in both the bar and the bench, it is public knowledge that some senior lawyers have since been recruited to frustrate the prosecution of corrupt elements in the society”.
The result of all these is that despite being Africa’s largest oil and gas producer, Nigeria’s core problem today is that it relies almost exclusively on expensive imports to meet its gasoline needs since all the refineries have all become dilapidated and idle, due to corruption and mismanagement.
It is unbelievable that much of this happened under the ever – wise President Obasanjo who doubled as Oil minister and waited, until shortly before his exit, to decide to sell the ‘dead’ refineries, which decision, allegedly suspecting foul play, the Yar Adua government promptly rescinded.
That exactly was when the rain began to beat us but it was still not enough for the kleptomanic PDP which then ensured that the number of fuel importers shot up exponentially; including not only party members, but the children of two of its successive Chairmen.
It is, therefore, under the PDP maladministration that any objective discourse on the current problem should begin. Curiously, the party, being congenitally shameless, is loudest in its condemnation of market forces dictating prices as we just saw but which it sees as government action.
Matters were not better, nor helped, under President Muhammadu Buhari who was also the Minister of Petroleum Resources.
Outright lassitude, complete with an unreflecting nepotism, and cronyism, especially in matters relating to oil only worsened between 2015 -2023 May.
As you read this, NNPCL, even as a limited liability company today, mirrors nothing besides a Northern Nigerian Development company in its staffing.
The result, as Adewale Adeoye recently put it in his brief intervention titled: N500B PALIATIVE: HERE’S A PEOPLE’S APPROACH, with which I perfectly agree: “Not that Buhari did not achieve anything, but his economic team was barren and arid, bereft of any creativity in form and content”.
All these government failures led us to no where besides our present gnashing of teeth and further pauperisation of the poor.
The current fuel prices, cannot, and must not, however, be used to judge the yet inchoate, barely 60 – day old, Tinubu Administration. This is because for him, doing nothing was no alternative at all.
Matters were, in fact, worsened by the fact that effective from this month (July 2023), there was no further budgetary allocation for fuel subsidy.
Tinubu simply had no alternative to coming up with new policies far different from those that would have inexorably led the country to perdition because, again, in Adeoye’s words:”The situation on ground is appalling. Buhari left a car without an engine, without tyres and laden with lice and rotten faeces”. It takes, he writes, “a lot of courage to as much as touch the car in the first place,”.
“That, for Adeoye, is what Nigeria has become”.
Tinubu is only now beginning to change things but the road will be difficult, as well as painful and will require patience and prayers from all of us because when, or if, the sky caves in, it will not do so on an individual’s head.
May the good Lord see us all through this very difficult phase of Nigeria’s development which, for a certainty, will become history.
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