Let Nigerians Breathe: Who Should We Hold Responsible?

USSIJU MEDANER 

The utterance, “Let Nigerians breathe,” was recently popularised when the President of the Senate, His Excellency, Godswill Akpabio, used it during one of his speeches in the recent past. And, of course, there is the need to say the same again and again, even now, as things continue to deepen southward for the citizens; and as Chinua Achebe puts it, “Things fall apart; the centre could not hold.” The president once and again acknowledges that the citizens are going through a perilous period of unprecedented hardship on all fronts, during his response to the current and yet another increase in the pump price of petroleum products, most especially PMS in the country. Right now, sincerely speaking, Nigerians would appreciate it if the president could devise a way to step down on several policy directions to ease the burden of hardships affecting the majority – if it is possible. Or rather, to create feasible and working relief policies beyond the apparent less effective recurring palliative programs; because it is obvious at this point that the dishing out of palliatives in the form we have witnessed cannot address the deeper problems the country and her people face now.

No doubt, the hope of many Nigerians, and of course, the unspoken message the system has been sending all along while we were waiting for the Dangote refinery to roll out its PMS was that it would be a game changer on several fronts, including pump prices of the commodity for the country. It happened with diesel some months ago. Dangote refinery rolled out the product and the pump price crashed by as much as six hundred naira across the country. Right now, we cannot understand what makes the calculation different.

Now, it has happened. Dangote PMS is out, and prices Have moved up to approximately nine hundred at NNPC stations and as much as one thousand two hundred at some locations across the country, with no guarantee that we have seen the worst. In fact, if we are to go by the obvious trend, we should be expecting further upward changes in the pump prices with time. For as long as the forces of deregulation and inherent corruption, as much as the monopolisation of the Nigeria oil and gas sector holds sway, it should become obvious that Nigerians may not be able to come to benefit again from the sector.

How do we explain that despite all the obvious need to address the local refining power and the continuous huge spending on all our national refineries, the story has not changed a bit? It promises after promise of yet another take-off date since the days of former President Muhammadu Buhari. Who are the people deceiving the presidents while they continue to maintain their devilish hold on the nation’s main source of livelihood? These presidents were so sure the refineries were coming onboard, made genuine promises to the citizens and had to repeatedly eat up these promises.

We waited for Dangote, an astute capitalist to solve the problem of a whole nation. We waited for a businessman whose singular objective has always been to maximise his takes and profits from each and all of his ventures. Is Dangote cement affordable to Nigerians? Is Dangote sugar or any other product affordable? No! So, why will anyone believe he will begin with a refinery built with $20 billion and make the products affordable right off the bat?

Our people are ripped. We hold four refineries that for almost two decades were not producing a drop of refined products, but are regularly drawing taxpayers’ money to offset salaries and wages of a redundant 1,604 staff to the tune of 137 billion nairas yearly, excluding other allocations for maintenance of the refineries. How many legitimate civil servants would be paid a minimum of two hundred thousand naira from this money for years and how many years? The same money has been literally shared with people who are doing absolutely no work.

I have forever been an ardent believer in the “rent-seeking” aspect of fuel subsidy removal. I have written about it for decades and was highly elated when eventually we got a president who got the nerve to do the needful as many of us believe. The theoretical calculation and projection presented the country with a magnificent blueprint of an economy rid of wastage that has crippled the country of all its capacities to invest in serious infrastructural development as well as human capital development. But what do we have? The subsidy was removed; funds are free for alternative use, and monthly allocations to federal, state and local governments have been hugely increased. States are now getting as much as twice what they were getting before every other thirty days, and we expect the dawn of massive development across states and local governments all over the country. But what do we have? No change! Rather than investing in agriculture to prevent the glooming food insecurity across the country, instead of investing in Medicare to provide cheap, affordable and accessible healthcare to the citizens, instead of investment in education to change the educational landscape of the country, instead of investment in human development; we see governors going ahead to borrow more money only to pay salaries. Eventually, we are all directed to face the federal government as the reason why nothing seems to be working for us as a nation and as a people.

We cry of hunger, yet the states run ministries of agriculture that are moribund, only paying workers without any meaningful contributions to the food needs of the state; because the governors were not interested in investing their states’ money in agriculture. 774 departments of agriculture across the 774 local government areas of the country are contributing nothing to ameliorating the food insecurity in the country, yet allocations are made regularly to the departments. Eventually, we blame the federal government and let go of the governors who continue to pocket humongous state allocations, monthly until most of them will become richer than their states after their tenures.

If each state governor does well with the allocations to the state and other internally generated revenues, hardly would we have a state in Nigeria struggling with food shortage. Those who cannot meet up would easily buy from those with excesses. If only we could have each state doing the needful by ensuring that it invests massively within the ambit of available and purposeful funds allocated to its ministry of agriculture, farming and related ventures, creating and managing strong storage systems and food processing systems where necessary, food insecurity would never have been part of our national challenges. Funny enough, even right amid the gory food insecurity we are passing through now, what are the state governors doing? What harvest in any state has been credited to the direct action of a state that is changing the narrative? All we are seeing are ‘audio’ investments, funds movements and no tangible results.

Nigeria and Nigerians are on their knees and we are all looking for who to hold responsible for the hard times we are going through. We want scapegoats for the poverty that is hitting hard on us; we want someone to hold responsible for the inflation in the economy, and we want someone to hold for the poor access to both education and healthcare in the country. We want to hold someone or something to account for the perennial lack of employment and non-industrialisation of the country. We have dropped everything on the table of Mr. President. Yet, is it just a president barely a year in office who is responsible for the perennial challenges of a country?

Until we begin to ask the right questions and hold the right people accountable for our problems, we are going nowhere as a people. How can a nation with as much as zero industrialisation and manufacturing capacity expect not to be in economic jeopardy in this current global community, where the weak naturally become a dumping ground for serious nations? Nigeria is a weakling, depending on other far more serious nations for its many critical needs, including refined petroleum products until now that Dangote is about to change the narrative – hopefully.

Where is our once-upon-a-time national industrialisation? Of course, we were a proud nation with the spread of industries across the nation. Where are they now? The underdevelopment of Nigeria took a new turn downward from the moment then President Olusegun Obasanjo handed the country’s privatisation of national assets to Atiku Abubakar and the eventual selling off of all functioning national enterprises to incompetent bidders and the eventual collapse of all of them across the country. The list is too many to count. We have not recovered from them to date. NITEL was gone, ALSCON at Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom, is no more; a company built with $3.2 billion and fully operational was sold off to the lowest bidder at $130 million with a concession of $120 million to the buyer from the paid sum. We collected $10 million for the company, that never existed again since then. NAFCON is also gone, NICON Insurance is gone, Onigbolo Cement is no more. We sold Eleme Petrochemicals to a foreign concern without presenting the country with a 5% share before the National Council on Privatisation. Summarily, 145 federal investments and enterprises were sold off yesterday without a thought for the future of Nigeria and Nigerians; those businesses were almost all dead today. Today, Atiku Abubakar is being touted as a messiah.

In a bid to get it right with electricity and power generation in the country, successive governments of Obasanjo, Yar’Adua and Jonathan spent an estimated N2.74 trillion in 16 years. That investment was more than enough to set up the country for effectiveness in the energy sector, yet, we got nothing out of it. Only Obasanjo spent $16 billion in 8 years with nothing to show for it. Today, these men are saints that we praise while holding down a single man, president Tinubu, for the many woes of the entire country.

The oil cabals, the same big and mighty men in the corridors of power, past leaders across sectors, powerful military men and traditional rulers, a devilish gang bent on monopolising the nation’s oil and gas industry and taking it for their personal enrichment. The same people who bastardised the national policy on oil subsidy until we had to grow the nerve to end it. The same people who are responsible for the diversion and stealing of crude oil to the tune of $38.7 billion only in just four years from 2019 to 2022. In 2023 alone, according to findings by the National Assembly, the crude theft figure was pegged at N2.3 trillion from the theft of 65.7 million barrels of crude priced at an average of $83 per barrel. Imagine what this money could have done to the ailing economy in those five years. And that is only from crude theft. Apart from direct theft are the losses linked to vandalised pipelines across the country. In 2022 alone, oil companies operating in the country reported a loss of N803 billion worth of crude oil to pipeline vandals and a few operational issues. Are they ghosts? No, they are not! Why are we pretending not to know them and keep blaming one man, the current president, for all our problems?

Coming from here, unless we pause to agree that our problems are not coming from a single man and face the reality of directing our grievances effectively where they are rightly deserved, we would most likely remain a nation under oppressors without resistance.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!