By Alade Rotimi-John

The Federal Government’s peremptory or arrogantly impatient reaction to recent renewed calls for an introspective interrogation of the fuel subsidy regime has thrillingly spawned its own industry of sorts, including parodies, stunts, content creation, rebuttals, and even a threatened television documentary.

The plot of these artistic modes revolves around the President Tinubu declaration at his inauguration on 29th of May, 2023. Tinubu himself has recounted how he was uncontrollably siezed on that occasion by a strange spirit to declare his “Subsidy is gone” diatribe.

Because the victims of the declaration have been the ordinary people of Nigeria, they have lived through the period since the pronouncement with baffling clues and a catalogue of symbolism that has befuddled a seemingly innocuous policy statement.

The President’s “Subsidy is gone” monologue even though has led to a quest to expose an old conspiracy and to the discovery of a shocking or benumbing looting spree of the common patrimony, has compounded the nation’s socio-economic problems.

Almost before Tinubu could step down from the dais where he made his eureka declaration, the price of petrol and of other petroleum products quadrupled. Staple food items including traded Nigerian articles immediately went out of the reach of the people.

Many intriguing characters parading as pantomimes on the side of the government were themselves scandalised. They sought scientific explanation for the president’s undue radicalism. They divined that solution for ameliorating the situation was underway, just to give the policy a soft landing.

Conspiracies opened new avenues even as new questions were being unrelentingly posed. The people, on their own, have moped in bewilderment for a quest for answers even as they have not profited from the surrounding hullabaloo. They have been left wondering if they could live through the befuddling regime of macroeconomic “bulaba” for another set of four years, all things being unequal.

There is understandably therefore, a resurgence of interest in the subsidy removal policy position, if only for the benefit of hindsight. An attitude of active rebellion or of passive indifference has characterised the people’s reaction to a general situation of hardship and of hunger, these three and half years.

Many otherwise hopeful people have resorted to anti-social means of providing for themselves and their families. They have become vulnerable to banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery, “yahoo-yahoo”, advance fee fraud, romance scams, etc. These vices are not mere social coincidences. They are, in the main, a stark evidence of a pervasive social and economic disequilibrium brought about by an abruptly-configured socio-economic relations interplay.

The “Subsidy is gone” catechism can be correctly identified as an incident of the paraphernalia of the neo-liberal ethic of the Tinubu presidency. Whereas subsidies are a hallowed creed of social democracy whereby education, health care, housing, transportation, energy, and an array of social services are objectively subsidised as an incident of pragmatic investment in ultimate all-round prosperity. Neo-liberalism, on the other hand, preaches and legislates the removal of such subsidies. It unabashedly transfers the surplus accruing from the subsidy removal to enrich its cronies and proxies. Neo-liberal socio-political and economic advocacy is predicated on the philosophy of furthering the nests of a few in society, based on visceral or emotional criteria like elitism, religion, ethnicity, cronyism, privileged connection, etc. It is not a policy for uplifting the majority of the people or for making them participate in the commanding heights of the economy.

Our path for answers to Tinubu’s heady insistence on the non-reversal of the policy on the removal of fuel subsidy and of other subsidies which government has touted as the elixir for the much-needed re-engineering of the economy and as the only way open to a reformist government mission has been made easy by a number of well-heeled contributions suggesting that the Tinubu prescription is a devaluation of society’s rightful veneration of a populist or democratic setting. It is a derogation from the desideratum for life more abundant for the generality of the people.

The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has introduced a uniquely remarkable and socially-conscious dimension to the conveniently-rigged debate. He has not only identified the removal of subsidy on life-sustaining products and programmes as wicked or morally reprehensible, he has hinted that petrol should not cost more than N200 per litre. Adebayo has assured Nigerians that, if elected president, the pump price of petrol will not be above N200 per litre.

The economics of it he has demonstrably put together in his party’s published blueprint. The verbiage of his commitment is couched in a language that is intelligible to the household, the marketplace, the farms, and the streets. As he was not brandishing a magic wand, he has detailed how his vision is possible through a combination of an increase in domestic refining capacity, a guaranteed dependable crude supply to functioning refineries, and the removal of iniquitous costs from petroleum products distribution.

Canvassing his own position, Mr Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), pinpointed corruption as the bane of the subsidy regime. Obi argues that the massive corruption surrounding the exercise of subsidy provision is its bugbear. If the corruption that has become its other name is curtailed or eliminated, Obi assures, subsidy removal is sure to exponentially free capital for the effective performance of government’s covenant social responsibilities.
Subsidy removal by itself is not an economically unsound policy. Adequate arrangements for ameliorating its initial hiccups ought to be made ahead of its announcement or exercise, Obi has posited.

Former Vice-president Atiku Abubakar, who is the presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has provocatively concluded that the litmus test for determining the correctness of the policy of subsidy removal is the question whether the people are better off today than they were three years ago when the “Subsidy is gone” declaration made.

Atiku has epigrammatically identified two Nigerias respecting the vexed issue of subsidy removal. One Nigeria, he says, is outside the conference rooms, the financial markets, and government spreadsheets.

The other Nigeria is busy spewing out figures, data and statistics that support rent-seeking. She is actively politically supported by compradors.

Atiku has canvassed a “production based subsidy” that “puts Nigerian refineries, Nigerian jobs, and Nigerian consumers first”.

It is clear that the civic space is wide enough to bear an uninhibited discussion of this very important matter which doubly qualifies to be an agenda during the inexplicably delayed electioneering campaign.

The political parties appear to be campaign shy since INEC blew the whistle for campaign fireworks to start. The evidence of hardship all over the land truly prioritises the full discussion of the matter which by itself touches the security, safety, and welfare of the people.

The macroeconomic gains of the subsidy removal which the government flaunts each time, do not, going by the express terms of our social contract, satisfy the reason for the establishment of the state in the first place. They do not situate the people’s accommodation or endurance of government’s unintelligible verbiage on the matter either.

There is the urgent need to take more than a cursory look at the reform measures of government respecting subsidies to determine their effectiveness or to find out if their expressed objective has been truly met. The people have been holding the short end of the stick of the reform vision. The full amplitude of the consequences of the subsidy removal should be brought home to all even as it is made a vigorous campaign issue for the 2027 general elections.

A straightforward matter which has been conveniently convoluted into a mass of gobbledegook can be made easy to digest as we all come to the realisation that macroeconomic buoyancy must reflect the people’s lived experience for it to be real. A policy that has the inexorable ability to erode the purchasing power of the people cannot be explained otherwise. It is callous. It is unacceptable.
It ought to be withdrawn.

•Rotimi-John, a lawyer and commentator on public affairs, is the Secretary-General of Afenifere [email protected]