1. Citizens are speaking out on social media.
Nigerian social media has become a true parliament and marketplace of ideas. The commentary gets more acerbic with fuel price increments.
2. Fuel price economics and costing
The third price increment in Nigeria’s fuel pump price forced citizens to share alternative costs on social media. Here’s one analysis.
*HERE IS THE BREAKDOWN OF THE MAKE-BELIEVE DECEITFUL COSTS THAT MAKE UP THE LANDING COST OF PMS IN NIGERIA TOTALLING ₦1,107 PER LITRE*
1. FOB cost: N434.32
2. Freight cost: N86.48
3. Insurance cost: N10.58
4. Lightering cost: N23.45
5. Jetty depot fees: N15.35
6. Storage fees: N12.58
7. Financing costs: N34.67
8. Foreign exchange costs: N23.45
9. NPA charges: N10.58
10. NIMASA charges: N5.29
11. Customs duties: N51.17
12. Other levies and charges: N50.00
Total landing cost: N1107.00
Please note that these costs are subject to change and may vary depending on market conditions, exchange rates, and other factors. This breakdown is based on publicly available data and may not reflect the current or exact costs.
*With the Dangote refinery coming on stream, we do not have to pay for items 1,2,5,6 7,8,9,10,11*
So, the cost will significantly reduce but spoil business for these thieves and the CABALS in power.
Do you know that with Dangote Refinery coming on board, the no 1 item (FOB cost of ₦434.32 is out because it only comes in when goods are shipped in from a foreign land?
Therefore, the real cost should not even be more than 300 naira per litre with Dangote producing because:(FOB ₦434.32 + FREIGHT COST₦86.48+ LIGHTERING COST ₦23.45 + JETTY DEPOT FEES ₦15.35 +STORAGE FEES₦12.58+FINANCING COST ₦34.67+FOREIGN EXCHANGE COST₦23.45+NPA CHARGED ₦10.58+NIMASA CHARGED ₦5.29+CUSTOM DUTIES ₦51.17 = ₦686.76.
*So, ₦950 / litre – 686.76=₦263.24. *
A corrupt, free, people-oriented Government should not sell fuel at more than ₦300/litre, including profit margins, considering the economies of scale.
Higher rates for critical licenses
3. How Tinubu WILL NOT contest the 2027 election
4. What Nigerians fail to see, according to First Lady Remi Tinubu
The First Lady, Mrs Remi Tinubu, was front and centre in the past fortnight. She was in Osun State as a guest of the Ooni of Ife. She donated N1 billion towards the development of Obafemi Awolowo University, her alma mater from which she graduated 41 years ago. She inaugurated a hostel and a 2.7-kilometre road that the Ooni donated to the University and named after her.
She rejected the Tinubu administration’s blame for the country’s current challenges, which were caused by the elimination of the petrol subsidy and the flotation of the Naira.
She said, “We are just 18 months into our administration; we are not the cause of the current situation; we are trying to fix it and secure the future. We know that the subsidy has been removed, but with God on our side, in the next two years, Nigeria will be greater than this. Those who attempted removing subsidies before could not see it through. But with your prayers in the next two years, we will build a nation for the future.”
The former Senator Tinubu affirmed again that her family had wealth independent of the federal government.
Many irreverent comments followed reports of her statement on social media.
a. Maybe they need to add their recommended ” eyeglasses” for Nigerians to see what they are seeing that others are not seeing! I don’t blame her/them…they are having visual hallucinations from substances that give them that level of ‘ highness ‘!
b. Pastor Madam First Lady, the only one with the gift of sight and sound in Nigeria 🤣🤣🤣 !!!!
c. Have you bought your Nigerian Aso Ebi ma? Once you wear that, you will see.
Read also: Nigeria’s economy riding on three deflated tyres – World Bank
5. Tinubu’s Economic Highway to Hell
Two common slogans the Bola Tinubu administration embraced are “reforms” and “market forces”. Every day, the public is assailed by the cacophony of government officials and APC’s apparatchiks mounting the slogans amid the unprecedented hardship under which the people are being buried.
Some of them say we’re paying the price of past governments’ failure to take the bull by the horns and carry out reforms with the attendant pains.
Therefore, we should endure the hardship and even thank the administration for doing what is needed. Nirvana, they assure us, will inevitably be the outcome of the ‘creative destruction’ that Tinubunomics is inflicting on the country.
Let’s be clear: nothing creative has been wrought in the wreckage that the country is reeling from in the past 15 months. The so-called reforms that have brought the country low, ignominiously demoting it from Africa’s largest economy to fourth (behind South Africa, Egypt, and Algeria), have been haphazardly formulated and implemented the same way. This approach to reforms reflects more adhockery than a serious attempt to change how the country is governed and the economy is managed.
This conclusion about President Tinubu’s ‘reforms’ haphazard nature is borne out by the absence of a plan underpinning them. Any government that’s really committed to reforms should have a plan for implementing them and mitigating the impact of the deleterious consequences on the public.
Fifteen months into his presidency, there’s no plan – and seemingly none in the works – that lays out a roadmap to achieve the one-trillion-dollar GDP in five years as, Wale Edun, finance and coordinating minister of the economy, gleefully announced last year.
It’s deeply ironic that, having reduced the country’s GDP from $362 billion to about $258 billion in 15 months with their ‘reforms,’ they’re talking about growing it to $1 trillion in five years. This would have been hilarious if a comedian had invented it as a joke. But coming from the finance minister and other top administration officials, it speaks to the ad hocery that has been the hallmark of the government.
It’s a basic fact that serious industrialisation, general development and growth of an economy are driven majorly by accessible and affordable power.
Of the top five African economies, Nigeria, the fourth largest, has the lowest daily power output at approximately five thousand megawatts, with a fragile transmission grid constantly collapsing. If power generated with generators by companies, big and small, and individuals are added to the five thousand, what we have is possibly between eight and ten thousand megawatts.
Obasanjo carried out reforms without spreading mass poverty and pain. Those reforms not only energised the economy but also led to the emergence of a fairly sizable middle class.
Since 2015, APC has succinctly demonstrated that it’s a most lethal weapon of mass destruction and impoverishment. Ending fuel subsidies and floating the naira simultaneously is unqualified economic insanity. It reflects the shallow thinking behind the reforms that have gone completely awry.
The naira is suffering death by a thousand cuts from policy miscues, misalignment and gross mismanagement. Its purchasing power has been very severely decimated. It’s now the butt of acerbic jokes even among Nigerians victimised by its destruction and despised all over Africa.
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In just one month, NNPC increased its price twice. The latest one came last week, with petrol now selling at a national average cost of ₦1,200 per litre.
The justification or explanation for the increase was that the subsidy was finally gone. Government and NNPC spin doctors said market forces would now be the sole determinant of the price. In 15 months, petrol has increased from a base price of about ₦200 to ₦1,000 per litre. And this has left raging inflation in its wake, leading to mass hunger.
Indermit Gill, World Bank’s vice president, reminded the tone-deaf Tinubu administration at the 30th Nigeria Economic Summit in Abuja that Nigeria now has the world’s highest number of people living in extreme poverty. Vice President Kashim Shettima shook his head in apparent consternation as Gill laid out the cold facts about their reforms.
Those who talk of allowing market forces to determine the value of the naira and prices of petroleum products are either disingenuous, crassly insensitive or both. They forget that Nigeria is the epitome of chaos with a dysfunctional polity and even more dysfunctional economy.
And where’s the minimum wage for workers? The ₦70,000 is now worth far less than its value when Labour and the federal government signed off on it two months ago. Apart from Edo State, the federal government and 35 states have yet to start paying it.
Since the agreement was reached, the fuel price has been increased twice, violating the government’s promise to Labour to accept ₦70,000 as the minimum wage.
President Tinubu says we all should make sacrifices by bearing with him and enduring the pains of his reforms. He says he knows what he’s doing and why he’s doing it and that, in the end, the country will be better for it, and we’ll smile again.
But he’s exempted himself from the sacrifices he’s asking Nigerians to make. His new fleet of expensively customised official cars and the new Airbus A330 twin-engine, wide-body presidential jet show his hypocrisy and imperial pretensions.
The presidential jet he discarded, a Boeing 737-700 series bought brand new and used by his predecessors—Obasanjo, Umaru Yar ’Adua, Goodluck Jonathan, and Muhammadu Buhari—wasn’t good enough for him. He ordered a more grandiose one. The A330-300, when configured for commercial operation, can carry over 300 passengers in three different classes. This is nothing but vanity with a capital V.
He must be reminded of his warning to President Goodluck Jonathan in January 2012. He opposed Jonathan’s decision to end subsidy and wrote an open letter to the president about it. He said, among other things, that Jonathan “is a slave to wrong-headed economics”.’ And because of that, “the people will become enslaved to greater misery…. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy.” He concluded that while reforms were needed, “they must have a human face.”
Those around him say he’s doing what others before him failed to do. He was the same person who opposed Jonathan’s reforms, including subsidy removal, purely for political expediency and to position himself as the people’s champion. So, where’s the human face in his reforms?
Author: Email: [email protected]. Phone: 0807 629 0485 (WhatsApp & SMS only).
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