OPINION: 50 years of sense and nonsense of fuel subsidy

AUTHOR: Ugo Onuoha

BOOBY-TRAP! That is what the regime of the President, Maj-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, has set for the administration, if any, that would succeed him in 2023. Nothing is certain anymore in this country, including conducting peaceful, credible, free and fair elections and the handing over of power from one administration to the other. The ongoing low intensity civil war in parts of the country and full blown war in other parts have combined to make uncertainty certain. The situation has not been made any better by political and civil agitations from parts of Nigeria for the remaking of the country. Tensions mount every day because in spite of the loud calls that this country is not working and no longer fit for purpose, those in government, who also control the coercive instruments of the state, have remained adamant, claiming disingenuously that they do not understand what the other party is saying and that all is well. And to cap it up the regime has no restraints in unleashing violence on those who say that Nigeria is not working.

Not done, the governing All Progressives Congress [APC] political party keeps adding to the uncertainty. That is what it just did by kicking down by 18 months the imposition of another steep tax on hapless Nigerians in the guise of the removal of fuel subsidy. Within this 18 month-period, and in addition to ongoing agitations and insurrections in many parts of the country, would be added political parties’ congresses and conventions, nomination of candidates for the offices that are expected to be vacant in 2023, campaigns, the declining value of the Naira, the deepening poverty in the land and every other scary thing in between. But this is Nigeria which has a way of pulling back from the brink against all odds. The prognosis this time, however, appears to suggest that we might have reached a point of no return. And something would have to give.

There is something uncanny about kicking the ball to 2023 for the commencement of the new petrol tax. One is that it sets a booby-trap for the next administration from Day One. And more significant is that 2023 marks 50 years since fuel subsidy crept into the lexicon of administrations in Nigeria. Fuel subsidy came in the wake of the First Oil Crisis in October of 1973. Arab nations had banded together, and coopted or coerced some other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries [OPEC] to impose oil embargo on the United States of America and European countries who supported Israel in the Arab-Israeli war earlier that same year. The Arabs believed that the support of the West tipped the war in favour of Israel and ensured their [Arabs] crushing defeat. So the plan by the

Arabs was to cripple the economies of the West through oil embargo. The measure had unintended consequences including steep rise in the prices of petroleum products in Nigeria. The regime of Gen. Yakubu Gowon intervened to stabilize prices at the petrol pump. And a subsidy was born. And we have been mired in subsidy debacles since after that crisis.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of fuel subsidy, Nigeria is still grappling with the matter. Every administration since the 1980s had been confronted with the vexed issue of subsidy. But none had been as pathetic and disingenuous as the APC regime under Buhari. In 2012 Citizen Buhari, fresh from a third failed attempt to be elected President, said there was nothing like fuel subsidy. In his bid to discredit then President, Goodluck Jonathan, who attempted to impose petrol tax, Buhari had said: ‘Nigerians are being deceived on the issue of fuel subsidy.

Read also: OPINION: Did Rotimi Amaechi take an oath of silence?

The federal government takes out fuel [crude oil] for refining, only to come back and talk about removing the subsidy. That is nonsense and an attempt by a clique in the PDP [Peoples Democratic Party]-led federal government to siphon the proceeds to be realized from the removal of the oil subsidy’. Buhari’s acolyte Prof. Tam David-West, who was oil minister while Buhari was military head of state between 1983-1985 also dismissed claims of petrol subsidy. He said: ‘There is no oil subsidy in Nigeria. It is a lie and fraud. After the regime of Gen. Buhari I challenged government after government, from Gen. Ibrahim Babangida and Chief Ernest Shonekan to Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo and President Goodluck Jonathan, to appear on national television with me to justify their subsidy. There is no oil subsidy. Oil subsidy in Nigeria is fiction, it doesn’t exist and it is a fraud’.

In May 2016, exactly one year after Buhari was finally elected President of Nigeria at the fourth try, he imposed the steepest tax on Nigerians at the fuel pump, jacking the price of a litre of petrol from N86.50 to N145. For him fuel subsidy was no longer a phantom and a scheme to defraud Nigerians by the defeated ruling party. But the regime’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed, who many Nigerians believed is challenged with speaking the truth, spilled the beans when he admitted that the 2016 exercise was a tax and not the so-called subsidy removal.

In a rare moment of candour, Mohammed had said then: ‘The current problem is not really about subsidy removal. It is about the fact that Nigeria is broke. Pure and simple’. Earlier that same year, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, this regime’s transportation minister had boasted at a programme with the theme Nigerian Economy 2016- Charting Way Forward, that the monster of fuel subsidy had been dealt a deadly blow.

He challenged us to call him a liar if we found any provision for the payment of fuel subsidy in the 2016 budget. Truly, there was no budgetary provision but the regime ended the year by paying the highest amount of money for fuel subsidy.

And since then the regime has imposed tax at the fuel pump virtually every other year. Prof. David-West, a virologist that we referenced earlier, had also claimed that with the advent of the Buhari regime, petrol would sell for N40 a litre. If the good Prof. were to be alive today he would probably be ashamed that petrol is selling for N165 per litre preparatory to moving up to between N350-N400 a litre in 18 months.

The eternal arguments by opponents of fuel subsidy are hackneyed and harebrained. They include that it is corruption-ridden and benefits only the elite; smuggled across the border; fuel cheapest in Nigeria against other African countries; and, that savings would be used to build infrastructure and invest in education and healthcare. LIES. DAMN LIES. If these were to be true, our education would have since been the best in West Africa. It is not. Our healthcare facilities would have been world class. They are not otherwise, medical tourism even at the top would not be in vogue. Our hospitals are now worse than ‘consulting clinics’ in the wake of health professionals fleeing abroad in droves. Our roads would have still not remained deathtraps. Fuel subsidy is corruption-ridden and massively smuggled across Nigeria’s borders. So punish Nigerians at the pump for the incompetence or even connivance of government officials. Are the people who are corrupting the fuel subsidy scheme ghosts? Is petrol being smuggled to Nigeria’s neighbours by handheld containers? Duplicity should have a limit.

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Articles published in our Graffiti section are strictly the opinion of the writers and do not represent the views of Ripples Nigeria or its editorial stand.

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