Why Nigerians must resist next subsidy withdrawal

I have never seen a country run so fraudulently as Nigeria…

I have never seen a country run so fraudulently as Nigeria. The rulers have been criminal liars and there don’t seem to be any end to this. More or less, perpetual fraud and deception of the people by a few politically-connected elite ripping off the vast majority of long suffering Nigerians to no end.

The real hike of fuel price started with the dawn of ‘democracy’ in 1999. Obasanjo ‘removed the subsidy on fuel’, to ‘deregulate the downstream sector’, free government fund and waste in ‘unnecessary fuel subsidy and encourage direct foreign and local investments in downstream sectors of the very corrupt Nigerian petroleum industry more than three times during his eight years of misrule and electoral fraud. From N20 a litre, when he assumed power in 1999, he jacked it up to N30, but reduced it to N22, following public outcry in 2000; then to about N26 in 2002 and then to N40 per litre in 2003 and after the explosive protests he reduced it to N34 but later increased it to N40 in 2006, and finally to N75 just before he left power in 2007, when plotting to impose Yar’Adua on Nigerians, despite the man’s health challenges to start a fight with Nigerians and labour unions on ‘fuel subsidy withdrawals.’ Yar’Adua managed to reduce the price from N75 to N65 in 2007, which it has remained till date and from which President Goodluck Jonathan want to play the spoiler on long suffering Nigerians from 2012, if what we hear is true.

Where is the subsidy?

The truth of the matter is that there has never been any subsidy. Before the lame duck president Musa Yar Adua (Peace unto his soul) died, he confessed that a cabal has hijacked the Nigerian petroleum distribution and marketing process, and suggested he was helpless in getting unto them, probably because this cabal funded his rigging to power in 2007 or because of his health challenges then. And recently, Prof Tam David-West, a former petroleum minister (1984-1985, under the Buhari/Idiagbon regime) and one who should know better, confessed that there was no subsidy in Nigerian petroleum before 1986 and up to this day and I agree with the Prof. What has been happening is that thieves and greedy governments who want 10 presidential jets for themselves, wives and girlfriends, all out of state funds, when Nigeria can’t even manufacture a propeller; those whose second homes are in French Reveries, Central London and Hampstead areas and Potomac areas of Washington or Maryland when all they do is lazily distribute oil proceeds in Abuja every month and go to sleep thereafter until the next round of monthly distributions, have caused the naira to continuously depreciate and become ‘worthless’ more or less like ‘monopoly money’, or waste paper getting closer to ‘Mugabe’s dollars!’

The naira keeps dwindling in value, while the evil politicians who do not care because they get free petrol and aviation fuel for their chains of cars and jets, come back on the hard pressed people to tell them they want to withdraw ‘fuel subsidy.’ There is no end, and there will be no end to this as long as this band of pirates continues to rule us! They know the truth and where the problem lies but they will never address it. Like I said about Prof David-West, there were no subsidy in fuel when our four refineries were functioning at full capacity and properly maintained. Since 1999 in particular, tons of cash have been allocated for TAM (Turnaround maintenance) for the four refineries which never got anywhere near engineering or equipment for maintaining refineries, but ended up in bank accounts of PDP sup- porters and election rigging facilitators, who call themselves contractors.

And so, Nigeria has been dependent largely on imported petrol and kerosene for a growing population, the exact numbers remain unknown, as we can’t even count ourselves because of ineptitude and corruption of our rulers who always manipulate these numbers to their selfish desire. And who does all the importation of petroleum products? The PDP mafia and election rigging funders at all levels of the chain. The people are swindled whichever way the pendulum swings, and no way out of this mess because the baton is being changed to the same group of oppressors; utterly clueless and corrupt and it does not matter where the baton holder comes from, they all dance to the same tune and never representatives of the people they purport to represent.

There will be no end to this cycle of increases and lies of ‘subsidy removal’, so long as the greedy elite and IMF-inspired technocrats like Okonjo-Iweala are in charge to ensure Nigeria continually depreciates the naira relative to the dollar with all the waste, mismanagement and corruption in running all arms of government in such a wasteful country. Yes, the Nigerian people must resist very vigorously, this umpteenth increase in the name of a ‘bogus fuel subsidy’ removal.

tonykwene@aol.com