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Halt
the Frequent Fuel Price Hike
Published
Wednesday, June 9, 2004.
The
recent fuel price hike by oil marketers acting on the tacit consent
of the government of President Olusegun Obasanjo must have come
as one too many. The increase saw the jacking up of the premium
motor spirit PMS (petrol) from N41.50 to about N50 per litter That
it was the eight time that this government will be sanctioning a
fuel price hike was not salutary to the deftness of an administration
which has hardly made life bearable for the people since its advent
five years ago in May 1999.
Predictably,
the price hike has attracted the ire of the apex labour movement,
the Nigerian Labour Congress NLC which has mobilised the workers
and civil society organisations for a strike massively supported
by professional bodies like the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and
the Nigerian Airline Pilots and Engineers Association (NAPEA) among
others. Even though the court has ordered the workers to suspend
their strike and oil marketers to revert back to the pre-fuel tax
price of N38, there's no clear indication that we have seen the
last of such mindless increase in the price of fuel. Before now,
the government and oil marketers engage in some intensive dialogue
and massive advertisement to justify the fuel price hike but this
has since changed as the people are merely taken for a ride.
Nobody
seeks to canvass the case for fuel price hike anymore. The people
as far as they are concerned do not matter. Motorists are only told
of price increases when they turn up at the fuel stations Although
voted in against the backdrop of a crumbled economy, weak currency,
raging inter and intra ethnic skirmishes, a protracted national
question, high rate of insecurity and assassinations and a low morale
by the citizenry, reined in by 29 years of excruciating military
rule, the Obasanjo regime has hardly lived up to the wishes and
aspiration of the people in terms of delivering democratic dividends.
Why did we rise against the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha
only to end up in this mess seem to have become a resonating question.
The
economy has nose dived, the value of the nation's currency, the
Naira has plummeted, social infrastructure is still in decrepit
state, capacity utilisation of the manufacturing sector is still
low while the cost of borrowing funds has hit the roof. Inter and
intra ethnic bloodbath is on the rise while the government continues
to play chess with the issue of resolving the national question.
Insecurity has also gripped the nation with state sponsored murders
taking a turn for the worse. In spite of a rising income from oil
revenues which is now sold at $42 per barrel in the international
spot market, the regime has opted to play ostrich with the welfare
of the people. This has prompted the question of what has happened
to the rising oil windfall. The nation's refineries are grounded
and have been apparently left to wrought.
Out
of the four oil refineries located in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna,
only one is working at a subdued capacity. The others may not come
on stream until the completion of the Turn Around Maintenance (TAM)
in August. The net effect is that Nigeria is spending huge foreign
resources importing refined oil, making her perhaps the only OPEC
country that is doing that. In spite of deregulating the down stream
oil sector, the price of refined oil has not come down since it
is predicated on the vagaries of the international oil market. For
now officials say the landing cost of refined fuel is N51 and the
marketers will have to sell between N60 and N70 to recoup their
investment.
If
it is true that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) is
spending over $I.09 billion to subsidise fuel importation, the government
has earned enough from excess on sale of crude oil to mitigate the
subsidy. Of what benefit is governance if it is not directed to
reducing the burden of its people who are said to live largely below
one dollar a day? What is the essence of governance if it is not
people driven? We seem to delude ourselves that the lot of the people
hardly matter. The government claimed to have spent N1.02 trillion
for poverty in the first four years, but not much has been done
in terms of generating jobs and taking the unemployed youths out
of the streets. There's also a big gulf between the N350 billion
said to have been spent on roads development and the huge craters
we see virtually all over the country.
While
the programme enunciated in the National Economic Empowerment and
Development Strategies (NEEDS) has a bold objective to generate
7 million jobs, the government is bent on drastically reducing its
hold on the economy thereby imperilling the targets of the policy.
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