The hottest debate in
town today is on fuel subsidy, its
removal and petrol price hike. Arising
from these issues are questions like:
How did we as a people come by fuel
subsidy? Why fuel subsidy? What has made
its removal necessary? How is petrol
priced in other countries? Some effort
will be made here to bring together bits
and pieces of information trailing the
foregoing issues and to make some sense
out of them. There is no intention to
join issues with technocrats. No room
here for statistics. There are many on
the internet. Here is the ordinary man’s
tale of fuel subsidy told with good
cheer.
Going by the arithmetic we have seen on
TV, in the Newspapers and on the
internet since the debate on fuel
subsidy, for every litre of petrol a
Nigerian citizen paid N65 for in 2011,
to run his car or fuel his power
generator, the Nigerian Government also
paid about N65. On your behalf, beloved
Nigerian citizen, government paid for
one-half of the true cost of all the
petrol you burnt until the end of 2011.
“True cost. . ." .
I can hear you say, “Who beg them?”
Nobody did. What happened is that some
people were asked to run our 4 petrol
refineries profitably and among other
things, refine for home consumption,
some of the crude oil from our soil, so
abundant Nigeria was once rated 4th
exporter worldwide. If this had been
done well we would have petrol very
low-priced in this country. The people
entrusted with running our refineries
failed on the job. Some say they did not
fail because of genuine human error of
judgment in doing business; but that
they served their personal greed. They
pocketed monies put up by government for
maintaining the refineries in what they
call, “TAM” - Turn Around Maintenance.
All 4 refineries broke down nearly
completely at a point in time.
Frustrated, government allowed them to
remain so for quite some time and groped
about for what to do.
I can hear you ask, “Those who pocketed
the monies for upkeep of the refineries
and brought us to this pass, are they in
jail?” We have not risen to that level
of civilization. Ordinarily what we do,
as you know, is to sack you after you
have stolen a few millions and create
room for another Honorable man who takes
your place and does the same thing that
earned you a sack. I understand to jail
those who pocketed the refinery monies
would bring out the names of Honorable
and Distinguished Gentlemen. The safe
course was to suffer Nigerians to be
without a viable refinery.
The solution to the problem of our
inability to maintain our refinery, the
government thought, was to licence some
people to import petrol. The importers
would not sell at N65 per litre. And so
Goverment agreed to subsidize as above
described, pay one-half of the true cost
of the petrol you need. That is how we
came by fuel subsidy.
While the honeymoon lasted between the
government and importers of fuel there
was peace. As you know, honeymoon is a
situation of give and take. No one cared
to raise the questions asked herein
above. The minions of Fortune soon
became as wise as their counterparts in
the refineries. They imported 10 litres
and claimed subsidy for 15 litres. In
2011 alone the annual subsidy figures
doubled, tripled or quadrupled – I do
not know exactly – the previous years’
figures. Then the names of the fuel
subsidy fraudsters became known. Even
members of parliament who violently
expired their foul breath on Sanusi of
CBN for telling the people of
government’s reckless spending, dared
not reveal the names immediately. They
went on a retreat to assess the possible
damage of revealing the names of the
Honorables. They returned with the names
of the companies instead.
Meanwhile the government said enough is
enough with fuel subsidy. They did not
go on a retreat to assess the impact of
fuel subsidy removal or maybe they did
but chose to ignore the effect. Everyone
in government rides an official car
fueled by the People of Nigeria, every
President, every distinguished gentleman
of the Senate and House of
Representative or of Assembly , every
governor, every minister, every
commissioner. And thanks to our Senate,
Nigerians have a new phrase in our
lexicon, “Jumbo Pay”. So what is the
business of this class of people with
fuel subsidy removal?
Who cares about the effect on
transportation, house rent, food from
the hinterland, school fees and school
shoes? If we wrote it into our
constitution that no person who draws
salaries and allowances from public
funds shall all together take more than
50 times the minimum wage, there will be
more subsidies.
The immediate and visible effect of
petrol subsidy removal is that the price
of Motor Spirit has catapulted from N65
to about N140, officially. What is the
situation in other countries? We have it
on good authority and from a recent
survey that petrol sells for the
equivalent of N30.55k in Kuwait, N17.52k
in Saudi Arabia, N58.40k in Iran, N54.00
in United Arab Emirates, and N39.42k in
Bahrain. These are places where people
manage to do what should be done with
monies set aside for maintaining their
refineries.
In fairness to the present government
they inherited the fuel subsidy
situation. The government’s intention in
removing it is a good one. Someone said
in the debate that we should remove
corruption and not fuel subsidy.
Corruption in this context is defined as
absence of fair play, not just the
presence of immorality or injustice.
Thus to remove corruption we must bring
our Distinguished Senators’ salaries and
allowances to 50 times the minimum wage
and bring this policy progressively down
to the minimum wage earner.
Fuel subsidy removal should be the last
bus stop in our effort at eliminating
all waste in governance and social
services. If we did this, investors will
find investing in refineries viable.
Many of them will do this and set up
competition among themselves, much like
the GSM Phone people, and market forces
will keep prices within your pocket and
mine. This is the government’s good
intention. But they went about it the
wrong way. Of course at their numerous
meetings the movers and shakers of
government refused to suggest that their
pay be reduced to 50 times the minimum
wage. They pounced on fuel subsidy. That
act is the unkindest cut of all on the
resources of the poor man.
Thus fuel subsidy removal is in fact a
brave act but the average Nigerian does
not look upon the President in that
light. The President would have been
considered brave if he first made the
highest salary-and-allowance drawn from
the public fund by any one person to be
about 50 times the minimum wage. If you
want to change the world, start with
yourself, I have heard said.
Long live Nigeria.
Bapakaye I. Dibi
Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 0803 7072 077
Published
January 5th, 2012
