*The strike is not about fuel prices really,
it is about Obasanjo’s style of governance.
*The people say: Talk with us, not at us.
We’re not against reforms... only against
your bullying.
*Nigerians are not your servants, you are
only first among equals.
*Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew carried out
tougher reforms...
*The manner of the latest fuel price increase
smacks of 419 - from the judgement to N52
per litre in 48 hours.
* This President can halt the slide by
talking to Nigerian people led by Adams
Oshiomhole.
Calling On President Obasanjo(1)
THE planned October 11 strike is not about fuel prices.
It is protest against bad governance. Nigerians are angry about the style of their President who reaches decisions before considering their impact on the lives of Nigerians. This trait is followed with marked bullying tactics of the President behaving as if he is above talking to the people who elected him.
In five years of this Administration, there have been five fuel price increases. Nigerians have borne the burden though they were never party to the decisions on the increases. All the promised projects that would be executed from proceeds of the increases have not been implemented. The roads remain bad, electricity is epileptic, even with government’s claims of higher power generation, and the education sector suffers endless industrial actions that have attenuated its essence.
These have generated immense anger among Nigerians.
The economics of the petroleum sector is buried in government’s lack of will be to be firm and transparent. The refineries have not worked with the millions of dollars that have been spent on them. It is on record that the government that prides itself with its transparency records has not prosecuted any organisation for the failed contracts on the refineries. Instead, government delights in befuddling Nigerians with stories of high crude oil prices being responsible for the Nigerian condition.
At other times, government has shifted the responsibility for price increases to oil marketers. Did Nigerians elect the President to govern the country or oil marketers? It is the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, a wholly government owned company that imports the fuel. This abdication of responsibility to the oil marketers has offended Nigerians more than the reasons given for the increases.
High crude oil prices in the international market are not necessarily responsible for the high prices in Nigeria. If in five years the refineries had been fixed and new ones built, Nigeria would not be importing the inflation associated with the absurd importation of a product of which Nigeria is the sixth highest producer in the world.
What is called subsidy – which government has vowed to remove – is actually the consequence of bad governance, government’s shallow policies in the petroleum sector and a reflection of the government’s belief that its wisdom in every matter is unparalleled.
How much is the subsidy? Should Nigerians from their minimum wage of less than $2 a day be able to pay international prices for fuel? Has the government thought of the consequences of the incessant price increases on industries that generate their own power?
Nigeria does not have any control over the wars in the Middle East or China’s surging oil consumption. The explanations that as these situations continue, the prices of petroleum products have to surge in Nigeria, are neither tenable nor sustainable. If the price of crude hits $60 per barrel, what would a litre of fuel in Nigeria cost?
The argument that our refineries are too old could be mere sophistry. Ghana has a 30-year-old refinery that works perfectly. Cote d’Ivoire refines products for export to other African countries. Yet both countries are not in the league of major oil producers.
