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Those who thought President Goodluck Jonathan would not push the fuel subsidy abolition policy through must by now be languishing in the abyss of disappointment. He has proved them all wrong. He has proved that he really meant business. He finally took that very brutal option, leaving us with no choice but to go to hell, if we are unwilling to come along with him. On Monday, January 2, while Nigerians were still celebrating the new year, the fuel stations shut their gates against their customers across the country, apparently, to re-programme their metres and to begin to dish out the killer pill that we must all now swallow – that is, the N141/litre petrol.

All the arguments against the decision on fuel subsidy removal have, apparently, been ignored. As expected, the policy has already begun to take its toll on the country and its long suffering people. Transportation has already fallen victim. Costs of movement of people and goods immediately took astronomical leaps. Many of the people who had travelled for the holiday got stranded where they were because their budgetary projections for their return trips suddenly became unrealistic and irrelevant. Intra-city movements also experienced the same amount of quake. All of these are only but the beginning of the tremor that is bound to be generated by this mission of national self destruction we have embarked on. We are going to get to that critical situation whereby, even the refuse bin would become so impoverished and unhelpful to those willing to pick from it.

I have been wondering since I drove out of a petrol station in the Oregun area of Ikeja on Monday, January 2, this year, the very first time I bought fuel at the new price of N141.00 per litre, if we, as a nation and as a people, are prepared for the disaster that would result from the step we have taken. Part of the anticipated consequences is that, generally, the national economy will shrink. Employers of labour would be compelled to lay off staff and what would happen to such victims and their numerous dependants can only be better imagined than experienced. In fact, many people are going to die prematurely. And this is no exaggeration. Hospitals and drugs will definitely become very unaffordable and most of the people who fall sick will have no choice but wait for death to come.

Many students are also going to be out of school. There is no doubt about that. Fees would be hiked beyond affordable levels in order for the educational system to survive in a highly suffocating economic environment; and if we are already complaining that our educational system is producing people that are only half literate, what it will produce under the new dispensation is better left to the imagination. The industrial sector will experience further plummeting. Cost of manufacturing will rise sharply and so will the cost of goods and services. In fact, many things will surely go wrong as a result of excessive price hikes. Our misfortune is that the government that invited this disaster upon us has no practical remediation programme for it.

We need not have embarked on this disastrous mission. As I said in an earlier column on this same subject in October, Nigeria is just not ripe for this fuel import policy. It is not yet time to end petroleum subsidy. We need to first develop cheaper means of transportation. The rail system which is about the cheapest means of transportation everywhere in the world is virtually non-existent in Nigeria. Our roads are in very terrible state of disrepair. This makes movement of people and goods extremely difficult and expensive arising from high costs of vehicle repairs and maintenance. It is like adding salt to injury to make a system that is already carrying a burden as huge as this to add more to it. That is why most of those who took a position against the removal of fuel subsidy wanted government to rather overhaul the fuel importation system to become less corrupt and more efficient. Apparently, government took the other option because it cannot confront the mafia that controls the fuel import business in Nigeria. In other words, it opted to take Nigerians to the slaughter slab to be used as sacrificial lambs. It is such a pity.

But by far the more unpatriotic aspect of the subsidy saga is the attempt by those pushing for the policy to demonise it. They have toiled all this while to convince the Nigerian public to accept the fallacy that subsidy is a satanic concept known only to Nigeria. Of course, it is not true. Even the more developed economies like America subsidise agriculture. Sometimes, the government buys up excessive agricultural produce and store, just to protect farmers from losses that could cripple their future efforts. So, it is not a crime to offer subsidy and that is why President Jonathan should reconsider the decision that has been taken. Let us return to the regime of subsidy while we work on our refineries to do more local refining of petroleum products and reduce our dependence on imported products. Let us also improve power supply. The administration should work harder on the power projects to ensure regular power supply across the country and to reduce our dependence on generators which consume substantial quantity of imported petroleum products.

President Jonathan should not allow this crisis over fuel subsidy to drag unnecessarily. Subsidy removal is only being sponsored by the same people who have rendered the country’s oil industry prostate. It will not help the cause of the long suffering people of this country.

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