In some major fuel stations in Abuja and some major cities in the country last week, the dreaded fuel queues returned albeit temporarily, and there was a mass hysteria that the Federal Government may have planned to remove fuel subsidy, which will resort in fuel price increase.
This was against the backdrop of the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that Nigeria should remove fuel subsidy. The Managing Director, IMF, Christine Lagarde, had on April 12, during a press conference at the joint annual Spring meetings with the World Bank in Washington DC, called the Federal Government to remove fuel subsidy, because of low revenue mobilisation that existed in terms of tax to Gross Domestic Product.
Recall that immediately he was declared winner in the 2019 Presidential election, President Muhammadu Buhari, said his next four years will be tough and Nigerians may have started feeling the heat. The government through the Minister of Finance, Zainab Usman, had earlier given the impression that the government could consider the IMF advice but later said the templates to have a complete removal of subsidy have not been created yet, fuelling rumours that the government may after all heed the IMF call.
The reaction from Nigerians were immediate and sharp against any planned increase in fuel price, which many said will affect the already impoverished Nigerian masses and throw the country into deeper crisis.
The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) immediately rose to denounce any planned removal of subsidy on fuel saying “it would result in astronomical increase in the pump price of petroleum and cost of other goods and services.”
NLC President Ayuba Wabba said in a statement that the IMF advice is harmful because among the agenda usually set for any president that emerges in the country are “the devaluation of currency, removal of subsidy, and opening of the country’s borders to free trade.” He added that in the understanding of the NLC fuel subsidy is nothing but funding inefficiency in the downstream sector.
According to him, the solution to the problem of subsidy is local refining of products, which will drive down cost of products and end the corruption associated with the present subsidy regime.
“In Nigeria, the removal of subsidy is synonymous with price increase and all of us know that the system is shrouded in corruption. So, clearly that recommendation is not only faulty, it is wrong. NLC consistently said that what needs to be done is to refine products for domestic use.
“So, naturally, you will kill subsidy and corruption. And to do what IMF is prescribing is to transfer the corrupt tendencies of the so-called subsidy now to the citizens. The fact of the matter is that Nigerians are so impoverished that any price increase certainly cannot be pushed down the throat of every Nigerian and so let’s tell our government that they should be wary of this decision,” he said.
Also reacting, the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) and the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) quarreled with the suggested fuel subsidy removal arguing that it is devoid of human feelings.
In a statement signed by Okugbawa Lumumba, PENGASSAN General Secretary and Afolabi Olawale, NUPENG’s General Secretary the two unions said that the IMF advice on how to recover Nigerian economy “was worrisome as it had become counterproductive.”
“Any economic policy that is devoid of human feelings can lead to more social dislocations and upheavals, which will later become counterproductive as currently experienced,’’ it said.
The unions said that IMF had “created panic in the country with associated hoarding of petroleum products, panic buying, and skyrocketed increases in prices of goods and services in the country.”
They warned that “imposing more stringent reforms in domestic revenue mobilization including increase in VAT and securing more domestic oil revenues through subsidy removal was an attempt to destabilize the nation.”
Speaking to BusinessDay on Friday, Director of Partners for Electoral Reforms, a civil society organization, Ezenwa Nwagu, who a policy analyst, said The IMF is not a head master that will dictate to Nigeria how it should manage its economy.
He argued that there are evidences of the fact that those who have swallowed IMF pill, rather than get well became sicker, adding that the struggle for a better society is not essentially left in the hands of the government but the citizens that “will brace up to ensure that the rabid nature of capitalism and its promoters does not snuff life out of the people.”
He added that it is not a matter of what policies the government initiates but the ability of the citizens to mobilize against any policy that is against their interests, saying “we have to mobilize the citizens to ensure that the conspiracy against the ordinary Nigerians does not survive.”
He however lamented that even as it appears as though the government does not have concrete plan to increase fuel price, “it is possible the government is just testing the waters.”
“The issues of fuel subsidy removal should be thoroughly debated by the stakeholders. But what I want to say is that there is no concrete plan anywhere to increase fuel price but Muhammadu Buhari has done it before and succeeded why won’t he try it again?
“How did he succeed he just divided the country into north and South so instead of seeing it from the logic of the argument we started seeing it from partisan lenses, from ethnic lenses and they profited from it.
“Citizen’s involvement in this fight is the only way out to get things from the government. Government cannot impose VAT if the citizens do not want it. We are already overtaxed,” he said.
He lamented that when President Buhari increased the fuel price in 2016, he was part of the mobilization to resist it but Nigerians did not come out.
“The people who profit from the fuel subsidy are holding the country in the jugular and most of those people are close to or in government. These people have conspired against Nigerians and the Nigerian people have allowed them to use ethnicity, political party and religion to confuse us. So a country that is bifurcated in this manner cannot resist anything.
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“The truth is that Buhari has large followership and most of his followers are not on the social media and after you have ranted on the social media and come to the real thing they will hold you down there. If you do a protest that is not a Nigerian protest, it will lead you nowhere. Okay if you do a protest in Abuja and there is no protest in Lagos, Enugu, Ibadan, Kano what kind of protest is that?
“So if you see things from the point of where you come from or from the point of where the President comes from you cannot mobilize for common interest,” he said.
On the question of price of crude oil going up in the international market and local consumers paying higher for fuel, Nwagu noted that it is “a Nigerian phenomenon,” adding that it is in the flawed system and structures of Nigeria.
“Former President Goodluck Jonathan sold crude for almost 100 dollars per barrel what did we get for it? The one before him (Yar ‘Adua) sold like that what did we get? Obasanjo sold what did we get? Nigerian leaders read from the same text book. The mistake that the citizens continue to make is to think there is a difference. When have the resources of the country been used for the benefit of the citizens? We must see it as us against the elite. The rulership of his country is subversive to the interest of the citizens of this country,’’ he said.
