Oil subsidy

I agree with Reuben Abati: It is Time to Stone Those in Power

/ Adeola / 1 Comment

By Adeola Aderounmu

In 2009 Reuben Abati recommended that it will soon be time to start stoning the economists in the corridor of power in Abuja. In 2011 I strongly recommend that everyone in the corridor of power and all those who are called stakeholders who have supported the removal of the subsidy on oil and oil products should be stoned.

Goodluck Jonathan has pinned the reactions of Nigerians to the proposed removal of subsidy on those who want to throw him out of office. I say that he fired the first rounds of shots on his legs. If this will mark the beginning of the end for his insensitive regime, let the occupation starts.

I want to ask the same questions that Reuben Abati asked in 2009: How? Where is this subsidy that government talks about? How was it disbursed?

Reuben Abati wrote in that headline that Nigerians will soon be trekking. Sadly enough Nigerians have actually been trekking before 2009. I remembered trekking from festac town to CMUL during the 2001/2002 fuel scarcity. I had obligations that couldn’t wait.

In 2011 Nigerians are not only willing to trek, they appear ready to march down the Jonathan government that has come to be characterized by weakness in all its ramifications.

From one generation to another, the Nigerian government presents a constant image of a permanent aggregation of dubious elements. In my personal opinion I have concluded that no amount of additional suggestions or written essays can solve Nigeria’s problems.

Are there problems facing Nigerians that the solutions have not been proffered here in the Nigerian Village Square or elsewhere where Nigerians display their intellectual capabilities? Do we have problems in Nigeria that we have no discussed about openly? What has happened to their implementations?

I believe so much in the solution proffered by Reuben Abati. Even so because when it is carried out it will consume people like him. I like such solutions that will not spare the hypocrites, the pretenders, the sycophant and the famously corrupt people in government, many of whom have recently been rewarded by meaningless national awards over several years.

I can’t imagine how people receive national awards in one of the most corrupt countries in the world. How does it feel to receive national awards in a country with one of the highest child and maternal mortalities in Africa? How does it feel to receive awards in a country where electricity is almost absent? How does it feel to receive national awards in a country where public education is almost grounded?

If Nigerians obey Abati’s call by simply rising up and stoning the people in the corridor of power, I am convinced that the revolution we long sought will start. It might be ultimate the clean-up we have waited from since 1960.
It is sad how things have turned out for the ordinary Nigerians. On a poverty wage of USD 113/ month, a Nigerian is expected to pay his rent, bills, and sundries. There is no greater miracle on planet earth than a Nigerian living on N18 000 per month.

In a country where more than 20% of the population is unemployed, I have found it hard to find a greater tragedy against the back drop of the immense natural resources and potential human resources.

If there is any country in Africa where the government should be giving relief packages to her citizens after 50 years of misrule and leadership failure, that country is Nigeria.

In a twist of test of resiliency the ordinary masses will be insulted further. For failing the build or maintain functional refineries, for failing to fight or curb systemic corruption, for failing to deliver on the so-called dividends of democracy, the insensitive Nigerian government now headed by Goodluck Jonathan will make Nigerians suffer even more.

Rather than relief package the economic team of Goodluck Jonathan, his executive council and the so-called stakeholders will deliver loads of additional burden onto Nigeria.

The arguments are hinged on the famous textbook concepts rather than the realities on the ground. There are no arguments that the Jonathan government has put forward that is different from what Obasanjo and late Yar Adua proposed. In all the previous partial or total removal of subsidies that have been used to increase the pump price of petroleum products, there has never been a corresponding increase in the quality of lives of the Nigerian people.

There is absolutely no reason to believe or trust the Jonathan government. It represents the PDP government that has held sway since 1999. The PDP is the largest aggregation of corrupt people in Africa. Under the PDP the quality of life has declined sharply at the same time that the cost of it has continued to increase unhindered.

This, as Jonathan feared in his recent utterances that the opposition wants to bring down his government, must be the last test of resiliency for Nigerians. Any attempt to increase the burden of Nigerians should be met with the highest possible resistance. The opposition that I see is the over 90m Nigerians living below the poverty level.

The argument that the state governors are in support of the removal of fuel subsidy does not hold water. Which governors? We know they want more money from the 52% that the federal government has been looting for several years because they are all the same birds. Why should what the governor wants be a benchmark for what the people want?

Why do the extremely rich but corrupt people in the corridor of power think that they know what is good for the suffering masses? When will the voices of the people start to matter democratically, if truly we are under a democracy?

I think it is sad and disappointing that Jonathan think that only the people in the middle class who have 4-5 jeeps will be affected by the subsidy removal. A lot of middle class Nigerians are even still struggling to maintain their statuses and to continue to pursue a happy life.

The dynamics of the Nigerian economy certainly reveals that the masses are the end-receivers of failed policies. When the subsidy is removed there is no doubt that the cost of transportation that is already exorbitant will increase further and the prices of dietary and other consumable products will follow the same curve.

We cannot live in denial and allow those who are shielded from the reality of everyday existence since they got to the corrupt corridor of power speak for us any longer. Reuben Abati and the other advisers cannot speak for the masses. Nigeria has not improved since this administration started wasting our time. Policies or parameters that neither put food on the table nor increase the quality/standard of living are abstract and worthless.

The practical situation in Nigeria today is worse and even more deplorable compared to 2004. Someone, an ordinary Nigerian who knows where the shoes hurt, wrote today that Nigerians should be ready to turn sand to food. In all sincerity he was not joking and he didn’t think we should laugh about his comment. People are suffering.
Nigerians need relief packages and they should be brought forward now.

If this virtual subsidy on oil products is removed and Nigerians remain resilient, it means our collective “suffering and smiling” will continue. It also means that People Deceiving People Party and the team of political and economic looters who are blind to the reality of a daily Nigerian life have succeeded again. Our glory is not yet come and that is so sad and disheartening.

aderounmu@gmail.com

A Move that Should Send the Jonathan Government Packing!

/ Adeola / 2 Comments

By Adeola Aderounmu

The tasks facing Nigerians continue to pile up. More than ever before Nigerians need to rise up and stop the evil once and for all time.

What is subsidy on petroleum products?

Since time immemorial Nigeria’s oil wealth has been looted, mismanaged and plundered.

The government of Jonathan is making no serious efforts to get Nigeria’s money from the likes of Babangida and thousands of politicians who have looted and mismanaged the economy.

How much is the government going to re-coup from the subsidy? How much is being looted daily in Nigeria and how much money do we have draining away from the national treasury every minute?

Babangida is keeping over 12 billion dollars. Bankole, David Mark, all former governors and all former and current government officials are keeping/looting several billions in different banks scattered around the country and around the world.

More than a million times we have said that individuals like Babangida should return our looted funds. Nothing happened. We are still shouting that looting should stop and looted funds should be returned even if it is from the Jonathans. This has not happened.

Abacha’s loot that was returned disappeared under the watch of Okonjo-Iweala and Obasanjo. No trace of the funds and these people are still in government or active from the sideline.

More than a million times we have said that it is not sustainable for the Nigerian lawmakers to continue to earn billions of naira annually while the rest of the country is on a freefall.

Nigerian politicians are the richest in the world while the ordinary people of Nigeria are among the poorest in the world.

How many times are we going to write and cry out loud that these things cannot continue the way they are.

The only way now to keep the mouths of Nigerian politicians wide and big to fit their extravagant life styles and unbelievably enormous wages is to tax the poor and needy and make them poorer and needier by making them pay more for petrol and kerosene.

Obasanjo and his co-travelers stole billions of naira meant for the power sector. Today Nigerians live in absolute darkness. Nigerians use all kinds of deadly generator sets to power their homes and offices. Noise pollution and severe environmental degradation means that life threatening factors have increased astronomically.

Over a long period of several years, more than half of a century Nigerian politicians and military gangsters collectively ruined the country economically, politically and morally.

Human dignity in Nigeria is on the negative axis.

The crooks in government continue to award all kinds of contracts to themselves. They never did what they promised. Instead they stole the monies for the contracts without doing anything. Nigeria was grounded on all fronts!

We know that the fight against corruption will continue to be superficial and pretentious because Jonathan and his wife have been accused of corruption.

Now Nigerians are been prepared for more days of evil and unknown years of grief.

Jonathan and his economic team want to increase the price per liter of petrol. The subsidy part of it is the malicious expression of their collective malformed mentalities. The successive evil governments in Nigeria have used the same phrase over the years and it has always worked.

It has always worked to put Nigerians in both chains and bondages.

If l could l will make this the last evil government in Nigeria.

What has changed since the prices of petroleum products started its artificial way upward in 1978? Our lives have only gone worse. The standards and quality still getting lower as the cost kept its rising profile.

The constant part of it is that the people looting and stealing have remained at large. They and now the Jonathan crew are living in opulence. They have no clue what it means for the rest of us to be jobless or to live on poverty wage of N18 000 per month.

Can Jonathan live on N18 000 per month? Even a maid or a houseboy cannot live on that!

Nigeria must NEVER, l repeat NEVER allow the price of petrol to go above what it is today. Nigerians should defend what is left of their already debased dignity.

Nigerians should fight Jonathan and anyone who tries to increase the cost of petroleum products. They should do so with the last drop of blood in their veins.

At all or any cost, Nigerians make sure that this man from the delta creeks does not add to the avalanche of burdens facing them.

The only reason any deceptive ruler will increase the cost of petroleum products again in Nigeria will be to increase the looting monies available to looters and useless Nigerian politicians.

Life is already too expensive. Why make it worse?

What has been done with the money that accrued from the increase in petroleum products since 1999, that is under the most useless party in Africa?

Why is the Nigerian government constantly in the need to remove the subsidy? As far as Nigerians are concerned there is no subsidy on petroleum products.

What have been missing since 1960 are good leadership and future-planning sane people in Nigerian government.

Is it the fault of the masses that Nigerian refineries are not working?

Is it the fault of the Nigerian people that the useless Nigerian government keeps importing petrol? Isn’t that a scandal that should be tackled?

So in four years Jonathan will not turn the Nigerian petroleum industry around? Of course not! How can he fight the power that controls him?

So, since 1999 PDP cannot make Nigeria work? Maybe there are no functional brains in the PDP!

No one in the Jonathan economic team can reason out that the best way is to find permanent solutions to Nigeria’s problems.

What blueprints is this fake transformation based upon?

What does the bad government mean by promising to provide infrastructure only after it has removed the subsidies?

Nigerians have endured more than 50 years of senselessness in government. We can endure till that time when a sensible government will plan for our children. Our lives are already wasted. My future was stolen before I was born. What else can I lose?

Our children and the generation coming after should be the focus. Therefore this talk about subsidy is evil machinery that should be met with the greatest possible resistance that will if necessary bring an abrupt end to the order of things and send all these wicked men and women into permanent exile or prisons.

Nigerians don’t need any cosmetic solution to the problems that have been created by 51 years of looting and continuous corruption.

Build the refineries. Stop importing petrol. Take away all forms of corruption in government.

Recover all stolen funds at all cost and by all means! Make them visible and accountable!

It doesn’t matter how long it takes to build the refineries. It is a task that must be done.

It doesn’t matter what it takes to fight corruption, it must be done. It doesn’t matter what it takes to get rid of the cabal in the administration, or in the economic sector or in the executive or judiciary. These things must be done.

it doesn’t matter how long it takes to recover all looted funds and whoever is keeping them, these funds must show face!

Jonathan must never be allowed to increase the cost of petroleum products. What he and the blood-suckers in the economic group including the corrupt people in the ministry of finance must be told is that only permanent solutions are acceptable.

If Jonathan’s government take out the imaginary subsidy on petroleum products to satisfy the greedy needs of his gang Nigeria should make sure that his government is thrown out in the days that follow. Nigerians cannot afford one more evil government.

The other day a man died in Oyo state while waiting on the queue for a verification exercise that will fetch him N1000 in pension. This is in the same country where already corrupt lawmakers and politicians effortlessly cart away billions of naira in allowances daily.

Nigerians wasted their time, votes and probably their lives voting for the PDP government in 2011. Nigerians lied to themselves; they said they voted for Jonathan and not PDP. Nigerians brought this new evil upon themselves but it is never too late to counter-act unless you are dead.

Now that Nigerians know that Jonathan is PDP and PDP is Jonathan I wondered what they are going to do about it. Nigerian should ponder deeply about that.

The proposed removal of the subsidy on petroleum products should be the last test of resilience for Nigerians. If it happens Nigerian should sack this government immediately. Arise O’ compatriots..!