Fuel subsidy is just one of the few things keeping us alive in this country. When I board a bus for N 150 instead of N 300, I'm enjoying the benefits of subsidy. True, it has been abused but it's govt. responsibility to operate it in such a way that it won't be easily hijacked by some unscrupulous elements.

At some point, subsidy would and should go but not now. It'd be extremely difficult to survive in this country if subsidy goes now. So, let the price go back to N 65

i rest my case.

manuch:

i rest my case.

Hey Mr. Manuch, Can you please include the deleted columns which show the oil production and population for each of these counteries so we
can make a fair assessment. This table is not complete. Because Nigeria is 3 times the population of all these counteries and each of them produces an
average of 3-4 times our daily oil production.

I vote for reversal to N65, because the political elite have not been honest and transparent to the people. They will not start except we demand for it.

It should be removed and let the Oil sector be deregulated so we stop having excuses from Govt

Past governments have made promises and have not kept to many of them, some of these being the rehabilitation of the power sector, the repair of roads, the development of the industrial sector, investments in education and health etc etc.

Now we have the government saying that they are going to make certain investments with the funds that they will save from the fuel subsidy, such as the repair of refineries, the investment in the power sector, investments in the health sector, investments into infrastructure and so on.

At the same time there is quite a large number of Nigerian people who feel that a lot of the subsidy funds will inevitably be looted.

The question is: how does one hold the government to their promises? How do we ensure that the strikes and protests eventually lead to a greater benefit for the Nigerian people?

How is it that the various agencies (NLC and others) have not got a commitment or guarantee from the government that the said investments will be made?

Why is it that the EFCC have not gotten involved in the government's current promises?

My questions may be elementary, but at some level these have been the sort of things that people have been talking about.

The issue is not promises. The issue is commitment. The issue is a guarantee to the people.

We all know that past governments have made certain investments into roads ad other areas when they did not have funds from the fuel subsidy.

And here is a point to ponder - if you notice some roads that are repaired, you will notice that every year or every two years the same road will need repairing again. This can only be for one of two reasons: that the underlying problem is the road foundation, or that the issue is that the road contract will be periodically awarded due to the fact that money will be made on every contract. Either way, the problem can be solved.

I understand that the current strike last week has also pointed to the problem of adressing corruption. But again I will say this - there is a difference in promising to address corruption, and guaranteeing to address corruption.

Go to a bank and promise to pay them back if they give you a loan. You simply won't get the loan. What they want is a guarantee. In the same way, after so many years of non-performing promises and so many people suffering due to that, the people have a right to hold the government to their promise.

One of the greatest tricks that we have succeeded in playing ourselves is convincing the Nigerian people that Nigeria is a rich country. I have once argued that the idea that Nigeria is a rich country is the greatest myth and scam we have played on ourselves, and until we understand that this nation is poor and start thinking progressively of ways to get out of poverty we will never make any significant progress as a nation.



Many will argue otherwise and make statements like, how can Nigeria be poor when we have so many billionaires amongst us? Just because a nation has a hand full of rich people does not make it rich, i.e the richest man in the world is from Mexico, I can’t remember Mexico being amongst the world richest nations. Someone once said that considering all the brand new exotic cars driven on our so called “highbrow areas” in Lagos qualifies Nigeria as rich, I couldn’t help but wonder how so many educated Nigerians make many uneducated statement. Who manufactured and sold the cars?



First of all, we will need to understand the different terms used, rich country, rich economy, developed country, country with rich natural resources, potentially rich nation etc. If we are able to define where we are then maybe we can find a way to move up the ladder.

From the list above, and my basic elementary understanding of economics, I would rather define Nigeria as a poor country , with rich natural resources, that has potentials to be a rich country that will result to a rich economy which will enhance our development as a nation


How do we define if a country is reach or poor? One of the easiest ways is to use the per capital income of country or GDP, we use this terms every day but only a few know exactly what it means and it’s almost impossible to explain the meaning to the common man. If you Google richest county in the world, you will be provided with several links to show you Nigeria’s ranking using the GDP statistics.


Another way to look at it is how does a country determine and finance their budget. A large percentage of the budget is normally from incomes earned either from trading (selling to other countries) or from tax and levies (internally generated revenue). The 2012 Nigeria Budget stood at about $30Billion that is about what the America government plans to spend on Energy in 2012 from their own budget. I always try to shy away from comparing Nigeria with the United State of America; however I couldn’t get more much factual information from other African countries.


Nigeria is not a producing state and it’s very difficult if not impossible to be a rich nation without producing. Since 90% of our total earnings are from crude and OPEC regulates the amount of crude we can sell it becomes difficult to assume that we can simply increase our crude oil production.


The big question that all Nigerians should try to answer now is how do we become a producing state? I honestly am not sure if our leaders can provide these answers. However, we should be more progressive in our thinking and support any government policy that encourages production either in the private or public sector. Increase in production will increase our GDP, provide more direct and indirect jobs. The more jobs there is the more the people are empowered to spend and this will drastically improve the economy.


Does deregulation of the downstream sector (removal of fuel subsidy) support production?


Lets try as much as possible to be less emotional in issues of our country and rather be more objective, logical and progressive.