Daily Independent Online.
*
Wednesday, June 16, 2004.
Petroleum pricing and the people’s
well-being: The example
of Ghana
In yet another ironic twist of
circumstance, Nigeria, the self-proclaimed giant of Africa, last week found
herself fatally bruised in an epic battle with the poor masses over another
senseless and dubious increase in the pump prices of petroleum products. Never in the history of the country has
the State, with all the massive apparatuses of propaganda at its disposal, been
so immensely and comprehensively worsted in a battle with civil society. It is a measure of the ineptitude, the
incompetence, the hypocrisy and the sheer display of wickedness and arrogance
of power by the Nigerian ruling class that this fundamental contradiction is
brought to its attention.
Yet the paradox is even more embarrassing when viewed
against the recent revelation of fiscal prudence and transparent management of
State resources by President John Kufuor of Ghana. In an interview he granted a section of the Nigerian media,
which could not have been more timely, President Kufuor last week announced
with an air of finality that his government could not have contemplated
increasing the pump prices of petroleum products in spite of the surge in crude
prices in the international market because it is particularly concerned about
the plight of the average Ghanaian.
In a tone which appeared laced with a fusillade of bitter sarcasm
against Nigeria, Kufuor declared: “If we abdicate our responsibility (by
increasing fuel prices), all our gains of the last three years - a
stabilised currency, reduced inflation and lowered interest rate - would
be thrown into disarray and disaster will take over”.
In contrast to
Kufuor’s three-year administration in Ghana, Olusegun Obasanjo’s
five-year regime in Nigeria has witnessed untold stagnation and gloom in every
sector. The level of human
causalities being daily recorded as security and the social systems generally
go rapidly comatose, has captured the increasing exasperation of most
Nigerians. The turn of events is a
cruel and tragic antithesis of a people’s expectation at the dawn of
civil rule in May 1999. The story
of virtually every responsibility of the State to the people; of every area
where the State remains relevant to her subjects under the unwritten social
contract principle has been rewritten on its head: hospitals have degenerated
from mere prescription clinics into mortuaries; the public school system is in
a shambles; roads, including hitherto smooth expressways, are now
deathtraps. And almost a century
after electricity supply debuted in Nigeria, her citizens still live more in
darkness than light. Hers is a
complete story of retrogression and decay.
Whereas Ghana which is not an oil producing nation
celebrated five years of uninterrupted power supply in December 2003, Nigeria
the sixth largest exporter of crude oil in the world with a production capacity
of 3 million barrels per day (bpd), cannot provide common electricity for her
teeming population. It must be
emphasised that Ghana imports crude oil from Nigeria and yet subsidises the
cost of fuel for her citizens. It
is therefore not a matter of profound argument or elevated intellectual debate
to say that Ghana’s leadership supremacy over Nigeria has endured since
the colonial era. For it is well
documented that Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the father of Ghanaian nationalism, once
dismissed Nigeria as “a big-for-nothing country”. The proofs are overwhelming.
Needless to go into individual instances to justify
this claim as the evidences are as open as a boil on the nose. What has turned Nigeria into a giant
with feet of clay is that it is one huge country in which natural blessing has
ironically turned into a national curse. Since the first discovery of oil in
commercial quantities in Nigeria in 1956 at Oloibiri in Bayelsa State and
exports began in 1958, it has been a tale of woes.
Despite
the huge revenue accruing from oil sale, Nigerians are becoming poorer. More than four decades of misrule and
consistent pillaging of Nigeria’s vast natural wealth by a tiny band of
recycling local exploiters, have shot Africa’s “giant” down
into a complete social system collapse.
The whole scenario is unwholesome: the decadent social institutions, the
despondent state of the economy, the decaying infrastructure, and to cap it
all, the recent pronouncement of Transparency International, that Nigeria is,
to all intents and purposes, the second most corrupt country in the world. Economically, there can never be
anything more humiliating and even frustrating than the current exchange rate
of the naira. The national currency
is several octaves below its metropoles that it is supposed to service. Tens of thousands of our graduates and
school leavers now trudge the streets of our cities in search of jobs that are
not in sight; and the communal bonds that once held our various nationalities
together have been rendered taut by the forces of annihilating and devastating
poverty. The people now keep a
feeding regime that skips meals.
While Nigeria is steadily retrogressing because of
the ineptitude of her rulers, Ghana which relies on our crude oil for survival
is progressing. Kufuor’s revelation shows that a nation may age without
growing not because of scarcity of goods and services but because of scarcity
of responsible leaders.
