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 Daily
Independent Online.
* Thursday, July 08, 2004.
Oshiomhole: Giving oil deregulation a human face
By Bassey Udo
Senior
Correspondent, Abuja
“On PPPRA, we have looked at the Act.
It doesn’t allow the Board to rewrite the law. Or to abdicate the
responsibility imposed on it by the law, which talked about fixing
benchmark price. A resolution by the Board would not be competent to
alter the letter of the law that the National Assembly has put in place.
Therefore to proceed, like Gbadamosi attempted to do, to say: Well, you
know we had decided that we are no longer going to do what we are set up
to do, is wrong. The only
option you have is, perhaps, resignation. But, if you have decided to
stay, you must operate the law, which says you must maintain benchmark
prices. You are not at liberty to abdicate responsibility to specify the
law, and/or appropriate the power of the Board as Chairman and proceed to
rectify what was never put before the Board.
“Let me
come to the real mission of the day. Government needs to have a holistic
approach or a political solution to this problem. The reason we are here
today is that if the government has not been fair to itself, it has not
been fair to us. After every crisis, government shies away from continued
discussion. That is extremely painful.
“Honourable
Minister, like you tried to say in my favour this morning, honestly I
don’t gain anything now. Even my international friends always ask me:
‘Brother Adams, what is the problem again? I say fuel. They say, fuel?
What about it? I say they have again increased prices. They ask: You guys
can’t talk? I thought the last time you reached an agreement? I say the
court intervened, and we said we would talk later. We started talking,
but we adjourned, and never met until this one again’. We don’t need to
be doing that!
“I am
very happy the Honourable Minister of Information is present today. Now,
I can see the method the government is adopting to protect itself from
its inconsistency. Changing the actors, so that the new Minister of
Labour can say: ‘I have learnt something new after listening to these
people’. If they had brought the SGF, he would not have learnt anything
new, because he has already heard the story. You are fascinated with the
new facts you have heard today. Your colleagues have heard it before.
But, that is exactly what you wanted to achieve. Spend some time to relearn
what we already know. I think it is time to begin to unlearn what is not
working, unlearn some of our assumptions so that we can learn new
approaches to have the solutions that would work.
“We
consulted with ourselves. The position of the organised Labour -NLC, TUC,
TFCU is clear. Government must be seen to manage this process. If indeed
it is a swing, it must manage the swing in such a way as not to do
permanent damage, so that after the swing those who die can’t come back.
“Chief
Gbadamosi, for those who know him very well, is very sound. He is an
economist. Not just textbook, but what is called a combination of white
and blue-collar economist. During the Great Depression, there were people
in Europe who were celebrating market. And Keane said they must go beyond
the market to deal with extra-ordinary situations. Maybe the normal
course of business is market. In abnormal times, there is need for an
activist state, and it talks about hiring labourers to dig the ground,
even if you don’t need the gutter, to keep them busy and pay them money.
Not only the social benefit, like removing people from crime, give them
something to live for and stimulate the economy. He was celebrated. He
differed from the perceived notion of the market. In a short while some
people said to him: This was not sustainable. In the short term, you
could do it, but, for how long? And the man said: In the long run, we are
all dead. It is true! Before
long, there will be short run and medium term. For those who would be
swung away, those businesses that would die with the swing if the
government does not intervene, will not benefit from your long-term
solution.
“I had
privileged discussion with Professor (Charles) Soludo recently. He had this clear picture
as to what we are going to do with the excess crude money. Build power
plants, roads, hospitals, and hostels. Beautiful! Except that he was not
saying anything new. If you play back what government said in 2000, it
was the same argument. If you recall what was said in January 2002, it
was the same. With the markup of August 2002, the same argument. June
last year, the same. But, if you ask our NANS brothers here, they will
tell you the toilets in their hostels are still not working.
“However,
he made a good point. But, he could not dispute the fact that as at today
the Nigerian economy is driven by generators, of which diesel is a major
input, and if you keep marking the price of this commodity upwards, you
raise production cost, which cannot be passed to consumers at home, because
of low level of income, but also you can’t compete with the rest of the
world in the face of trade liberalisation.
“Soludo
said: Yes, as at today, that is true. But, imagine if the money is used
properly, and after some time there is power supply, the roads are good?
I said very well. But, the only problem, however, is that those companies
that would have closed down today you cannot revive them once NEPA comes
back. You can switch from generator to NEPA, but you can’t switch from
death to life. Enterprises that would go under, you would not be able to
revive them overnight. So, you have got to have a policy that keeps these
companies breathing, though they may be unconscious, hoping that when
proper oxygen arrives they might regain life.
“I am
not doing this out of sympathy for the employers. It is a matter of
enlightened self-interest. If they die, the first casualties, the widows,
are workers who get thrown out of their jobs. So, we have some
suggestions. You can create a band of prices.
“I am
happy the National Assembly is not just ably, it is competently
represented here. If the swing is too high, protect us from it, the way
my mother will use blanket to shield me when there is harmattan. She is
ready to sustain it for some time knowing that after few weeks, harmattan
will give way to warmer weather. Government should do that to us. People
look up to this government for the protection and leadership. The
National Assembly can appropriate a law that will dedicate 450,000
barrels of crude, not the way it was done before unilaterally by the
Executive, which led to the fraud in NNPC, which till today, it is the
more question you ask, the less answers you get. When we asked how they
arrived at 450,000 barrels, somebody said that is just what we needed. Then
the man went ahead to sell it and refine it into some products, and was
making sacrifices at the Hilton with half a billion Naira as hotel bills.
Big sacrifices in Hilton Hotel for two months; forced to eat hotel food,
not allowed to spend his money.
“That
was possible because the policy was not properly thought out. It could
have led to those abuses. Kupolokun just told us that NNPC subsidises by
about N11 or so per litre. Whatever are the figures can be measured. We
can check that out and multiply by our national requirement, then the
National Assembly will realise how much money is required to be
appropriated for the purpose of meeting that subsidy. In doing that
appropriation, they will also prescribe a law on how to ensure that two
plus two does not become five. Once they build in those mechanisms, the
situation will not be muddled up as when NNPC was doing it unilaterally.
That is the challenge of the present policy.
“I am
not a lawyer. But, because you people keep taking me to the court, both criminal
and civil court, I now learn that whoever seeks equity must do so with
clean hands. You cannot probate and reprobate, something like that. I am
learning these things, even though I know it is too late. But, I am
trying. In any case, even if I don’t learn, I will still go to jail.
“We are
not saying we will eat our cake and have it. The Nigerian public cannot
say that. But, there should be a policy that says: If the price goes
beyond N42, the state will intervene and protect the people. And if it goes
below N20, the state will not pass everything over. It will harvest and
keep in case it goes up again. With that Nigerians can plan their lives.
They know that the worst that can happen today is that price will change
between the N20 and N40 band. If you can do that, you would have solved a
major problem and would have succeeded in building peace on a sustainable
basis. That, in a nutshell, is the solution we are proposing. This is not
the ideal that we prefer. What has informed this suggestion is trying to
make government committed to the market. If you agree that this is a
swing, it means it is not a normal process. So, once the swing is over,
marketers and NNPC will resume their normal business.
“Tinubu
said the price increase was
unprecedented. If it is unprecedented, it means it is not
something that will recur every other day. If it is true, with what we
witnessed in 1974, then we can guarantee that we would not witness it
again until 2020. I don’t think we are doing anything wrong asking for
this. But, to say that we should do nothing to shield the people from the
full impact of this temporary typhoon, I don’t think that is the
challenge of government, with all due respect. Nobody is asking you to
abandon your romance with the market. But, keep a certain band known to
the Nigerian nation, so that there will be no shock to anybody if the
situation changes. I don’t think this deviates fundamentally from your
commitment to market-driven prices, provided that when prices go
abnormal, somebody will not try tell me it is for the good of the nation
or for the purpose of stability
“I also
acknowledge that that would give you a once and for all solution. If
exchange rate changes, even if other things remain constant, the balance
could be upset. When I started with the NLC, I was wearing size 50
trousers. Today, because of all these deregulation, I am using size 35.
If I am going to see my tailor now, my measurement will change.
“Once
the indicators change, the stakeholders can now meet with NNPC or PPPRA
and look at the market fundamentals. If none of these things violently
changes, then you will be sure that there will be no swing for the
marketers to do their business, and Nigeria will be free from all these
cycle of strikes, price increases/reductions, court cases and so on.
“I want
to appeal to our big friend, Gbadamosi, to assist us. I know he has the
ears of the Presidency. If you people go to tell him that the suggestion
is that he should do away with the market and return to the regime of
administrative control, I know that you won’t stay in that room for long.
This man does not want to bend backwards. But, if you tell him that
nothing is going to undermine the market, but that we need a policy to
deal with unforeseen swings, I don’t think anybody would be hostile to
the idea that does not compromise the principle that would not allow us
to live and survive abnormal weather.
“The
story about refineries, again, is not quite correct. My father used to
advise me in those days that if I go to any village meeting and the
elders there say, ‘look, before your father was born, a certain thing
happened in the village’, they did not expect that there will be anybody
around to crosscheck. If you go to your father, who they have already
said the thing happened before he was born, and since your father is
likely to be older than your mother, even your mother cannot be of any
help.
“On the
matter of the refineries, we have this benefit of having people who work
there, whether upstairs or downstairs. They are even here. Facts are
sacred, opinions can be free. We must not mislead the public about what
is not the case. May God give you the wisdom, open-mindedness, and above
all, the will to agree that the nation has found the solution, and that
to find the solution, we can’t wish the problem away, and there is need
for a new initiative to find a lasting solution. Thank you sir.”
If the speech was to serve as a
food for thought in government circles, it was well seasoned and
garnished with the perfect flavour that was unsparing to the conscience
of the ministers and others on the government side. Every word that
proceeded from Oshiomhole’s breath had the thud of thunder as each of the
officials shifted and adjusted on their seats with obvious discomfort
about his audacity. The charged atmosphere hardly allowed the meeting to
run it course as it was adjourned midway to save the government team from
further assault. But, before they scurried away from the venue like cheap
sinners, it was obvious that the big masquerade has been unmasked in the
market, and there was no way to continue dress a bad lie in the garb of
truth.
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