Of Fuel And Other Subsidies -By Muyiwa Adetiba

A few years ago, I had a dinner date with a former colleague and friend at Ikoyi Club Lagos. It was supposed to be a private, cozy affair. To my surprise, she came with a companion who was unknown to me. I made up my mind to tread carefully until his identity could be ascertained. I didn’t wait for long. As soon as we were introduced, he said he knew me – more like knew of me – and used to read me regularly until ‘I became Buhari’s supporter’.

Usually I smile and let comments like that pass; after all, you can’t please everyone. But because we were going to be together for another couple of hours, I pressed gently for what he saw as instances of my overt support. It turned out he was a State Executive in an opposition party which made his aversion for any kind of support or positive article for the man at the center understandable. Unknown to me however, a few of my close friends and avid readers were also uncomfortable with what they thought was my support for Buhari at the beginning of his administration. I wasn’t to know of this until towards the end of the former President’s first term in office when, according to them, my stance changed.

When we discussed it, I simply told them that my job as I know it, is not to have prejudices or pre-conceived biases about a leader once elected. Today, the refrain has started again as I am already being accused in some quarters of being ‘a Tinubu supporter’- one even used the word ‘fan’ in an email. Tinubu is barely two weeks in office for crying out loud. There is nothing mature or even progressive about fighting his administration now unless one is biased against his person.

That, for me, is unprofessional. I believe every leader should be given a chance to succeed until he misuses that chance like Buhari did. Only God is wise enough and powerful enough to determine anyone’s destiny and it is futile for any public commentator to play God. As we have seen time and time again, leaders and redeemers can be chosen from the most unlikely of people and places. Besides, I have been around long enough, fifty years in journalism and counting, with about half of those years as a weekly columnist, to understand that many opinion writers pontificate without bothering to know of the constraints many leaders face while in office. I had been humbled at different times in my years as a practicing journalist when human, political and even cultural dynamics around some issues were later explained to me by those leaders involved. Those explanations have tempered me in a way only age – and experience – can.

Many issues have at least two sides to them. Only a bad judge – or a prejudiced judge – will decide a case based on one side of a story. Same with the current fuel subsidy issue with its multi-faceted dimensions. Unfortunately, many commentators took either the popular side or the side that suited them. Not surprisingly, many took their personal dislike of President Tinubu and the politics of the presidential election into account in deciding their side of the fuel subsidy debate. Many there were, who desperately wanted the NLC strike to take place and the economy paralyzed just to discomfiture President Tinubu. They forget that an unsettled presidency equates to an unstable country. They forget that the economy has been prostrate since the Emefiele body blow in January and there is only so much an economy such as ours can take. They forget that the eventual victims of a blanket strike will be the same poor people who are being buffeted on every side. They forget that when the poor cannot sleep, the rich also cannot close their eyes.

For the records, it hurt last Monday when I bought thirty litres of petrol for fifteen thousand Naira. Ten years ago, the same volume of fuel would have cost just two thousand Naira. It hurt when I bought watermelon for slightly under two thousand Naira; something that was just about two hundred Naira some few years ago. The way of the watermelon is the way every commodity has gone up over the years and worse now with the fuel subsidy removal. It is hard to imagine how the average worker will cope. Heck, it is hard to imagine how borderline enterprises will survive in the short run.

The removal of fuel subsidy will be a stretch on the fragile economy. But it is one that has to be done – though not the only option as some have argued – if we are borrowing money to subsidize fuel for our West African neighbours. It however creates a heavy burden for the masses; a burden that will be easier for them to carry if they realise that leaders and the elite are also making sacrifices. Our political leaders don’t fuel their cars themselves.

The State does. They can show more sensitivity by picking up their fuel bills or in the alternative, by reducing the cars in their entourage significantly. There are other ways where the State subsidizes the rich at the expense of the poor. Some of them include import duty waivers which benefit only the elite, tax waivers that are being abused by big companies, unwritten and padded conditions of service for top Public Servants, failed bank bailouts that again benefit only the rich, religious pilgrimages that benefit only the privileged and connected.

The list is long. It includes even the multiple exchange rate which has created its own billionaires. Finally, the cost of running Aso Rock and the Legislative Houses is ludicrous in these challenging times. It must be pruned drastically to show that our leaders are in tune with reality and global best practices. Tinubu for example, can afford to pay for some of the items on his menu just as it is done in the US where we borrowed the executive presidential system from. Ditto Shettima.

Other major problems are the leakagesand impunity in the system – exemplified by the Air Nigeria scam.

It is expected that workers’ salaries will be increased to cope with the challenge of the fuel subsidy removal. The increase should however be done with an eye on inflation. The self- employed and informal workers should also not be further impoverished. Finally, it is imperative that fuel supply and distribution should not be monopolized by just one or two outfits – maybe it is time to again embrace modular refineries.

More fundamentally, the times call for a rearrangement of priorities. Many previous ‘essentials’on our part should now be seen as ‘luxuries’. We must accept that our past leaders have long mismanaged the economy and it is now pay-back time.