Ever hated being right? Predicting and hating it when your prediction comes true?.
If you have, then you have a pretty good idea what went through my mind through-out the subsidy removal strike and protests. Owing to my pro-government stance on this issue, I have received a lot of stick. In fact, any person who reads my previous piece on Nigeria and our annoying system would be very much surprised to discover that I am for all intents and purposes, pro-subsidy; however, the thrust of this blog post is not about deciding who is right or wrong on the issue.
With the dust having settled since the uproars of the past few weeks, we can now critically evaluate the happenings.
What I want to do in essence is evaluate the main characters in this play and see where they have done well or erred.
First and foremost, a little background information. Most of it is public knowledge however; it just presents a particular picture in context.
Not many people actually understand the subsidy issue. The explanation of this policy is simple: the Nigerian government pays huge amounts of money to a select group of people who import premium motor spirit (P.M.S) or in lay man terms; petrol. These moneys actually represent a huge portion of the national budget year to year. The essence of paying these monies was to reduce the pump price of petroleum. This time around, owing to a promise of transformation from a hitherto ineffectual president, the Nigerian Government decided to remove the subsidy from premium motor spirit, i.e. stop paying the funds to the oil importers, promising instead to use the money saved to fund other badly needed projects in the country.
Do we start with the government? Yes I think we should, them being after all the policy promulgators and all that.
Where can we commend them?
ü Simple, they took the bold step. A president previously categorized as weak suddenly grew some balls and decided to face the biggest drainer of national funds and attempt to convert that deficit into positives.
ü The government was upfront about the difficulties to be encountered by the masses upon the removal of the subsidy on petroleum (even though any average Nigerian could have discerned this), ostensibly citing it as temporary, promising an overhaul of the petroleum sector, which serves as the main stay of the Nigerian economy.
ü The intentions are honourable. They made a structured programme for spending the saved money, setting up a committee consisting of reputable Nigerians to oversee it.
Where did they err?
´ They failed to lead by example. Nigerian cost of government rates as one of the highest in the world. The budgets for personal and official expenditure of the president and his aides as well as the other Governmental officials and appointees including the senators and their appointees are downright astronomical. How then do they expect us the masses to toe the line of austerity when they are not showing us the way?
´ Imagine being the C.E.O of an International organization, when new company policies are about to be effected or new programmes are to be incorporated, what is the most essential move to be made? The answer is simple: dissemination of information, this ensures that the paid help are fully aware of the reasons for and the justification of the policy to be implemented. Here, I have to admit, the Government failed. Granted, they made efforts, albeit to a public untrusting of governmental policies because of past experiences, still, I have to say they did not do enough. Did they go to the grassroots, the villages? No. they did not. Did they saturate the airwaves with the publicity we then saw after the strikes and protests? Those moves were then reactive instead of pre-emptive.
´ Palliatives: To me, the first duty of the government is the welfare of the people. The palliatives hurriedly put in place after the reactions of Nigerians to the removal of the fuel subsidy should have been in place before then. Here, they totally erred, eroding what little faith the people had in them.
Next, the people. Now some would probably berate me for putting the masses under scrutiny but I think we deserve some blame in this. My reason is simple. The subsidy discussion had been going on for a while, in fact, for about three months prior to the actualization of the policy, but we refused to read or heed the handwriting on the wall. We, the masses, in general made no effort to learn about the pros and cons of the policy. We simply saw it as a fuel price hike, which incidentally, it was, but it was greyer than that. I am of the opinion that the tension would have been less than it was if enough people had made the effort to thoroughly understand the subsidy issue.
That point being made, we did extremely well to have protested what we perceived as a trampling of our rights as Nigerians and the high handedness of government. Our protests and reactions made the government listen and bound them to a bond they will find extremely difficult to extricate themselves from except they deliver on their promises. It is a well acknowledged fact that the proposed cuts in government spending is as a result of the successful protests undergone by our protesters.
Now to the people’s champion, labour. Yes, they organized successful protests and kept the protests largely peaceful and non-violent, but there is a question I’d like to ask….. Where had they been all along? The people got it right with the protests. The protests of the masses weren’t just about the pump price of petrol, but about corruption, the excesses of government and a lot of other vices that had kept the Nigerian citizen hostage to the sands of time. Labour got it all wrong when they protested solely against the pump price. A friend of mine asked me what the day-to-day job of the labour leaders was, is it the preparation for strike and protests? How about lobbying and acting as watchdogs against government excesses?
Like I always said to my friends, labour does not help us. Rather, they always fail us. Like this time around, they did. What stopped them from sitting with the government and demanding, as early as November or October last year that they see the palliatives on ground before the subsidy removal implementation? If they had done their jobs, there wouldn’t have been any need for any nationwide strike. The truth again is that the Nigerian labour Congress was caught napping as was every Nigerian. So they should get off their high horses and admit their share of the blame.
Nigeria’s politicians are the bottom of the lot. The senators, councilors and other eminent politicians simply took the opportunity to score cheap points by appearing in the forefront of protests they had no hand in organizing in order to castigate the present government. The opposition in Nigeria was exposed as being toothless. In developed countries, crises situations are opportunities for opposition leaders to convince the electorate that they have something better to offer. Nigeria’s opposition showed that they actually have nothing to offer. All they did was criticize the present government without giving or proffering any solutions to fixing the quagmire the country was in, exposing their lack of imagination and not instilling any hope in them by the electorate.
All in all, I can say conclusively, is that there was no winner, nor was there any vanquished. Time is the only judge here, perhaps we’ll find out if we took the right course or not, in good time.
