President Muhammadu Buhari
1) I remain unpersuaded by the arguments I have read in favour of
oil subsidy removal. I am not talking about the mostly hot air,
ill-informed, half-informed, and politically-jaundiced propositions
being pushed on all sides on social media. I am talking about
conversations I've been following or contributing to in other spaces.
Until I read superior arguments and logic from those arguing in favour
of this move by President Buhari, I remain persuaded that subsidy
removal is wrong and I condemn it without equivocation. President
Jonathan was wrong to have removed it; President Buhari is wrong to have
removed it.
2) I am not unmindful of the basic problems with the subsidy
regime. We don't need to go into details here. The problems have been
retailed ad nauseam in our public sphere for years and are being
retailed now by supporters of President Buhari to justify the removal.
Let us just say that all those problems lead in one direction:
corruption. If oil is Nigeria's most corrupt sector, the subsidy regime
has been by far the most "fantastically corrupt" wing of that
spectacularly corrupt sector of the Nigerian economy. The subsidy regime
is the home turf of Nigeria's shadiest and most powerful characters -
the breeding ground of petro billionaires and multi-billionaires. These
are the criminal patrons of the Nigerian state who are paid billions to
import air or water or sand or nothing and declare it as imported fuel.
Some of them even import non-existent fuel in non-existent fuel tankers
and are paid handsomely by the Federal government in the subsidy regime.
3) There is also the other argument about market forces and market
dynamics. Supporters of the removal are saying that we cannot continue
to pretend that we can somehow defy the market, etc. I know this
argument too. In fact, it is sexy and seductive on the surface.
4) Everybody arguing in favour of oil subsidy removal is combining
numbers 2 & 3 above and their variants in their submissions.
5) Here is my problem with number 2. No administration in Nigeria
has ever really had the courage, the moral resolve, and the ethical
willpower to go after the saboteurs and beneficiaries of the oil subsidy
regime; those who decade after decade have prevented the dividends of
oil subsidy from reflecting on the quality of life and purchasing power
of the masses. None has ever been arrested or prosecuted. It means we
have never operated the oil industry with minimal corruption and
therefore have no national experience in what possible benefits are
accruable from a corruption-free oil sector.
6) When you remove oil subsidy, my understanding of it is that the
Nigerian state is capitulating to corruption. She is saying that because
she lacks the courage to go after the usual suspects and charge them
with treason and cleanse the Augean stable in a comprehensive manner,
she will just kuku give up and pack up the subsidy regime entirely.
Until we try a corruption-free petroleum sector with subsidy, it would
be illogical to conclude that subsidy does not work. It does not work
and has never worked because there are too many entanglements of
corruption. The untouchable fat cats making subsidy impossible are PDP
and APC, Christians and Moslems, they are from virtually every
ethnicity. And President Buhari is basically saying that he lacks the
resolve to fight them.
7) The same thing applies to Number 3. I remain unpersuaded by
market fundamentalism. Let market forces determine things bla bla bla.
The Western owners of this doctrine hardly ever subscribe to it.
Whenever something is determined to be the life wire of the middle
classes and the masses in their society, they subsidize it heavily while
describing others trying to do the same thing for their own people as
"rude" and "fantastically corrupt". No Western country is a genuine
market fundamentalist. Market fundamentalism is what they prescribe for
you if you are Chinese, Arab or African.
8) Read up on farm subsidies in the United States, Canada, and
Western Europe. There are critical sectors that these imperialists
protect at all costs for their people with subsidies while advising you
to remove subsidies and be at the mercy of market forces in the Third
World. For much of the decade of the 2000s, African governments
complained bitterly about how US and European farm subsidies were
ruining the lives of African farmers. They protect their own farmers
with subsidies and advise you to leave your own farm products to market
forces! What farm subsidies are to the developed world, oil subsidy was
to the Nigerian people: the only remaining safety net for the people in a
state run exclusively by the corrupt rich for the corrupt rich. Subsidy
was the only thing the people could still theoretically benefit from
(if you take out the corruption). Instead of fighting members of his own
corrupt ruling class who were making it impossible for oil subsidy to
work for the people, President Buhari has elected the laziest escape
route. From experience, the lazy escapes of the Nigerian state from her
responsibility always ensure that the people bear the brunt. This is not
acceptable to me.
9) President Buhari, go and fight the subsidy buccaneers properly.
If your government fights them in a way that commands the respect of the
people and market forces still overwhelm you, even with reduced
corruption in the sector and the installation of better refineries, then
you may come back and make a case for subsidy removal. The purported
benefits of this removal are at best fanciful. The economy is still
largely in the hands of saboteurs and traitors. Even your 2016 budget
will be implemented and monitored by the same people who padded it. You
said you would punish them only to end up shuffling them in the system.
10) Whatever your government is also preaching that the people will
gain from subsidy removal in the long run is not supported by our
history and experience. Just look at Fashola. What kind of noise did he
not make about the "dividends and benefits" of higher electricity
tariffs? What the people have gotten instead is higher tariffs
multiplied by longer spells of darkness.
11) These are the issues. Luckily for you, President Buhari, you
will get away with this subsidy removal because there is no opposition
in Nigeria. When President Jonathan tried it, there was opposition
against him. His opposition organized and mobilized and he was forced to
reverse his decision.
12) Those who say they are your own opposition today are
pea-brained caterwauling efulefus trolling the Walls of your supporters
instead of mounting principled opposition to you the way those whose
Walls they are now trolling mounted opposition to their hero. Fools that
they are, they are heehawing over who is an APC or PDP supporter. They
have been on the hunt for hypocrites in the past 48 hours, branding
those who opposed fuel subsidy removal under Jonathan and are now
supporting it under you. They can never organize like those who were in
principled opposition to Jonathan their hero. In fact, the closest they
have come to organizing in the Buhari era is to organize
‪#IStandWithBuhari‬ after fighting each other on Facebook over who
got what from Jonathan's campaign funds.
13) But for the fact that I gave up on them a long time ago in
terms of one's hope that they could evolve into a principled,
issues-driven opposition that could grow our democracy by not letting
you get away with decisions such as this subsidy removal, I would have
advised them to look into the mirror in terms of their search for
hypocrites. How can anybody have argued that subsidy removal was the
only way to go under Jonathan but not under Buhari and then turn around
to look for hypocrites?
14) Sadly, President Buhari, there is more to the tragedy that is
your opposition: they hardly ever come after you. They are always after
anybody they label your supporter. The absence of an opposition explains
why you have gotten away with issue after issue, especially on the
terrain of pre-election promises denied, modified, not kept, or ignored.
They cannot take any of these issues and develop it into a coherent
template for patriotic national dissent. Instead, they troll social
media looking for hypocrites writ large in their own mirrors.
And you get away with things, President Buhari!
- Written by Pius Adesanmi
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