Hello, its being a while and I have missed you as I share my thought on issues that concerns you and me on this space, and for our international audience we appreciate you and we hope we have being able to supply insightful thought to you.
Today fuel scarcity and subsidy are an issue in Nigeria, on January 1st, 2012 the federal government announced the removal of fuel subsidy but we all protested the removal .The protest for the ordinary Nigeria was not about the removal of subsidy but trust for the government that the people voted into power, it was about if the government was going to really build the refinery it promised to build with the subsidy removal fund. It was an issue of corruption, bad leadership and greed. Once beaten twice shy, the Nigerian people were not ready to suffer into place, pay high fare on PMS and still not get the infrastructure promised to be built. Today we are still at the junction of high cost of governance.
It was an angry scenario to me, when I went to the filling station to buy fuel and I had to pay five hundred naira extra to get 25 liters of fuel, I paid a thousand naira to get 25 litres for the car and 25 litre for the generator set to power the house when there is public power outage. I concluded that all this will be suffered by the lowest class because they have to queue up endlessly at the fuel stations, pay more, and may go home without the PMS product and suffer blackout in their houses.
It is now an issue, should the subsidy be scrapped or not? I think that it is two ways, for me the new incoming government must first lead by example for serious government business by cutting their salaries and allowance by between 40%-60%.
Secondly, the CBN must stop deceiving us and create enabling environment that works on reducing inflation rate, exchange rate and interest rate by putting monetary policies which will enable entrepreneurs to spring up business in different sectors, indirectly creating jobs, increase buying power, demand for goods and this will be achieved by appointing the right person in CBN governor. These are the first two things I expect the new president to do.
Now, if this can be done the people will be willing to sacrifice subsidy since the government has shown commitment to sacrifice for its people, the people will be willing to do same for the government. We have not heard anything about the subsidy scam and the bribe scam between Lawan Farouk and Otedola, all those who were caught in Lawan’s document as not being prosecuted by EFCC and triple payment of subsidy between last year and this year which Sanusi blew the alarmed before he was removed as CBN governor.
All arms of government must be transparent, all public fund must be accounted for through public media, the government must not hide any information from any citizen, all subsidy removal fund must be used judiciously to build the refineries we need, the roads we want, supply constant power supply without interruption, housing taking seriously and so on, this will restore the trust of Nigerians in their government.
THOUGHT FROM A GOLDEN PEN 