A group, Movement for Fundamental Change (MFC) has criticised President Bola Tinubu up over the faulty and hasty removal of petrol subsidy in Nigeria, noting that the manner with which it was carried out was anti-people and would worsen poverty in the country.
President Tinubu had on assumption of office in May 29, announced the removal of petrol subsidy, which immediately led to jump in prices of petrol, essential commodities and food across Nigeria.
But the group wondered why the President would take the recommendations of the World Bank to remove petrol subsidy without thinking it through when policies recommended by the institution had failed the country in past.
The group stated this in a press statement on Saturday jointly signed by its chairman Adegboyega Adeniyi and Alhamdu Ayuba, senior Analyst.
The statement noted that the permanent solution to petrol subsidy situation in the country was for the Federal Government to urgently repair the nation’s refineries to improve domestic production and stop continued dependence on importation of petroleum product.
“Fuel subsidy removal and other World Bank programmes and recommendations to Nigeria have all failed consistently as we predicted.
“These neo-liberal postulations of World Bank are inconsistent with our social-democratic culture and developmental agenda.
“The permanent solution to the fuel subsidy situation is simple and has been known since the Shagari administration.
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“We must stop the wasteful importation of expensive petroleum products by increasing domestic refining capacity.
“To increase domestic refining capacity is simple. We merely maintain and upgrade the existing refineries and build more public or private refineries,” the group said.
The group further stated that President Tinubu did not address the corruption and oil theft identified in the sector by the World Bank, but jumped to take the financial institution’s advise on removal of fuel subsidy.
According to the statement, “The World Bank correctly identified the problem as corruption in the government, which according to the same World Bank includes smuggling subsidised imported petroleum products out of Nigeria.
“Logically, the World Bank should recommend that we address the issue of massive corruption that it identified correctly, but the World Bank jumped to its pre-determined neo-liberal conclusion that is clearly catastrophic.
“In December 2016, Vice-President Osinbajo said, “The downstream sector has been deregulated with the elimination of petroleum subsidy. This policy has removed from government, a burden of not less than N15.4bn monthly”.
“Now, why did World Bank come back again to the same “remove fuel subsidy” chorus? It seems the World Bank misunderstands the hyper-inflationary impact of increasing the price of imported fuel.
Apparently, lazy World Bank researchers simply copy generic neo-liberal templates and recommend them inappropriately to Nigeria, without a good understanding of our socio-economic challenges.
“The home-made economic plan of the Gen. Abacha era under the leadership of Sam Aluko, showed much better results than all the inappropriate World Bank recommendations since the last forty years.
“Why are lazy World Bank researchers repeating a remedy that has consistently failed over ten times? We challenge the World Bank to a debate on this.
“With the level of mass poverty in Nigeria, this increase in fuel price has made our situation even worse. Macro-economic instability, inflation, unemployment, poverty, disease and insecurity are all increasing. The Naira is further devalued.”
