Posted by By OLA AGBAJE on
The proposed removal of petroleum subsidy by the Federal Government may lead to the eventual collapse of the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government, a prominent legal practitioner has warned.
The proposed removal of petroleum subsidy by the Federal Government may lead to the eventual collapse of the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government, a prominent legal practitioner has warned.
Senior Advocate, Emeka Ngige sounded the warning while reacting to the proposed total removal of subsidy on petroleum products beginning from January 2009.
The Minister of State for Petroleum, Mr Odein Ajumogobia recently said the Federal Government would remove subsidy on all petroleum products as the status quo did not favour the masses the subsidy was supposed to benefit.
The minister had argued that, contrary to the expectation that subsidy would benefit the masses, it was the rich who were actually enjoying it, buying cheap petrol to fuel their cars. He noted that a whopping sum of N1.5 trillion naira had been spent on subsidy since the assumption of office of the Yar'Adua administration, while stating that the removal of the subsidy would help the government to raise funds to finance projects that would have direct positive impact on the people.
Commenting on the minister's statement, Ngige noted that the PDP would be incurring the wrath of the overburdened Nigerian masses if it went ahead with the planned removal of subsidies without due consideration to the pains such removal would inflict on the people.
'It is a delicate issue and the government should be very careful. If they are not careful about it, removing the subsidy may spark off a masses revolt, which they may not be able to contain.
'It may lead to their exit from power, because they are pushing the masses to the wall. They are bound to respond and such response is not likely to be in anybody's interest.
'Honestly, I don't think they need any security report before they know that the issue of fuel is a serious security issue in the country," warned the legal expert.
He blamed the PDP for the nation's woes in all ramifications.
'The government is a PDP government and they are the ones making things difficult for the people.
'They know what to do to make life easy for the people. They know that the first step should be to revive all the nation's refineries and make them function at optimal capacity.
Then two more refineries should be built in the Niger Delta. If all that is put in place, then we would not be depending heavily on importation of fuel.
'In addition, if they are serious enough, they should have known that private investors should be encouraged to build private refineries. Such encouragement should take the form of waivers on importation of materials to build such refineries. But they will not do that just to increase the peoples burden," he said.
On the argument that the money realized from the removal of subsidy would be used to finance projects that would benefit the masses, Ngige noted that that argument had been severally recycled by successive governments, hence, nobody should take them seriously.
'Right from the time of former President Ibrahim Babangida, that has always been the argument. So nobody is deceived. Remember, they even told us that the price of a bottle of Cola-Cola is more than that of a liter of petrol.
'The argument they are canvassing is spurious and does not hold water in view of the huge amount of money we are realizing from excess crude oil earnings.
'They should use such money to finance whatever project they want and they should stop deceiving the people," he said.