₦airaland Forum

By Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu

As Nigerians gathered with family and friends to celebrate the New Year, the federal government was baking a national cake wrapped in the scheme that would instantly make the New Year a bitter one. Barely had the public weaned itself from last year when government dropped a historic surprise on an unsuspecting nation. PPPRA issued a statement abolishing the fuel subsidy. By this sly piece of paper, the federal government breached the social contract with the people. This government, which owes its very existence to the people’s desire to be governed by someone more humble than elitist, has turned its back on the collective will. By bureaucratic fiat, government made the most fateful economic decision any administration has made since the inception of the Fourth Republic and it has done so with an arrogant wave of the hand as if issuing a minor regulation. Because of the terrible substance of the decision and the haughty style of its enactment, the people feel betrayed and angry. At this moment, we know not to where this anger will lead. In good conscience, we pray against violence. Also in good conscience, it is the duty of every citizen to peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition to this draconian measure that is swiftly crippling the economy more than it will ever cure it.
By taking this step, government has tossed the people into the depths of the midnight sea. Government demands the people swim to safety under their own power, claiming the attendant hardship will build character and add efficiency to the national economy. It is easy to make these claims when one is dry and on shore. Government would have us believe that every hardship it manufactures for the people to endure is a good thing. This is a lie. The hardships they thrust upon the poor often bear no other purpose than to keep them poor. This is such a time.

I am not calling President Jonathan an evil man. I do not believe he is perverse. However, the economic ideas controlling him are so misguided that they have a perverse impact. Because he is slave to wrong-headed economics, the people will become enslaved to greater misery. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy. The people now pay a steep tax for voting him into office. The removal of the subsidy is the “Jonathan tax.” This situation shows that ideas count more than personalities. People may occupy office but how that person performs depends on the ideas that occupy his mind....

Though someday, Nigeria will have to remove the subsidy, the time to do it is not now. This subsidy removal is ill-timed and violates the condition precedent necessary before such a decision is made. First, government needs to clean up and throw away the salad of corruption in the NNPC. Then, proceed to lay the foundation for a mass transit system in the railways and road network with long term bonds and fully develop the energy sector towards revitalizing Nigeria’s economy and easing the burden any subsidy removal may have on the people.

But we know this is about more than the fuel subsidy. It is about government’s ideas on the role of money in better the lives of people, about the relationship between government and the people and about the primary objective of government’s interaction in the economy. It is about whom, among the Nigeria’s various social classes, does government most value. This is why public reaction has been heated. It is not so much that people have to spend more money. It is because people feel short-changed and sold out.



This brings us to another inconsistency. On one hand, government states the expenditure is unsustainable yet on the other it claims the amount now earmarked for the subsidy will be used to fund other people-oriented programs. However, the two assertions cannot exist at the same time . If the subsidy is bankrupting us, then reallocating funds to different programs will be no less harmful. A bankrupting expenditure retains this quality whether used for the subsidy or another purpose. Earmarking the funds to something else will not change the fiscal impact. If government is sincere about using the funds for other programs, then it must be insincere about the threatened insolvency.

By its action, our government placed itself on the list of conservative governments imposing unwise austerity programs on tired and weak economies. The results have been alarming. Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, and the UK have imposed stiff austerity. Each nation that has done so now has an intimate relationship with recession. Must we travel the same path? Why does our government think an independently-minded Nigerian success is inferior to the mimicry of European failure? I don’t understand why we take this road. Our government has allied itself with the goals of the European conservatives and not with the needs of the Nigerian populace. No one plucks a chicken to feed his children feathers. Nor does a man set his house on fire just so people can bring him water. However, this is spirit behind government policy. There has been no nation on the face of the planet that has developed or achieved long-term prosperity by devotion to conservative, ultra-free market economic ideas that dominate this government. America, the United Kingdom, and now China all based their initial thrust toward national economic development on significant government interplay in the economy and on sustained government fiscal deficits. If no nation has grown using these conservative ideas when growth was constrained by the gold standard, why would we shackle ourselves to these ideas when we operate under a monetary system that provides the federal government greater policy latitude to achieve economic development objectives.
Again, we must rid ourselves of the old notion that government saving and budgetary surpluses are inherently good and that deficits are always bad. For government to save naira, that means it brings in more than it pays out. Where does this influx come from? It comes from you and me, the private sector. If the federal government saves more, it means the private sector will have less. Government surplus means private sector contraction. This shows that the administration has its priorities confused. It acts as if the people are there to help government run itself. The more beneficial relationship is that government should be giving people the help needed to better live their lives. The government’s position is akin to a wealthy parent demanding his young children bring home more food for him to consume than the parent gives them to eat. We would deride any parent for such meanness. Yet, this government believes this conduct is wise and prudent.

Until this change occurs, the people must remain vigilant or else we will sink under the weight of what the federal government has done.

Signed: Asiwaju Tinubu, January 8, 2012.

Hisbah:
We should all support Tinubu to succeed.

Toks2008:
You obviously don't know me.

When I say a word I stand by it till death and if I realize I make a mistake I retract and apologize when necessary

References1:
https://www.facebook.com/660673490805047/posts/pfbid02toK11ETSNEfR6SLc3d6fQu5489yEp52hGQo2AVDtAjdgvfhxnGjbZdKrzfEpHKail/?mibextid=Nif5oz

DatNiggaDaz:
Where is Wole Soyinka, Tunde Bakare and others from that side. They must occupy Ojota like they did before.

DatNiggaDaz:
Where is Wole Soyinka, Tunde Bakare and others from that side. They must occupy Ojota like they did before.

Hisbah:
We should all support Tinubu to succeed.

Alliswell248:
K

Ajehkpako4naija:
drug addicts don't remember anything. Cocaine kills the Hypothalamus used for remembering.

TheOldGods:
did tinubu support Jonathan in 2012 to succeed?

DatNiggaDaz:
Where is Wole Soyinka, Tunde Bakare and others from that side. They must occupy Ojota like they did before.

Alliswell248:
Says someone whose state is the West Africa head quarters of drugs addicts.

Verify from Ndlea.

nairalanda1:
LOL...this your comment is funny.

Since when does an opposition party member, as tinubu was then, support a ruling party member.?

What you are asking...it is like asking Peter Obi to support Tinubu to succeed today.

nairalanda1:
LOL...this your comment is funny.

Since when does an opposition party member, as tinubu was then, support a ruling party member.?

What you are asking...it is like asking Peter Obi to support Tinubu to succeed today.

oluwoleife:
Was there a functional refinery in 2012 to sustain the removal of fuel subsidy unlike now?

People just argue blindly

vanitybutiwanti:
So is he insinuating that subsidy should not be removed at all because Tinubu held a different opinion in 2012, we are humans and we change our stance/positions on issues when confronted with superior knowledge/facts. Nigeria is irredeemable because people that should know better are unavoidable partisan and bereft of common sense.