Tales Our Leaders Told Us —Dubem Moghalu

When the President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan decided to announce on the 1st of January 2012 his government’s intention to end the practice of subsidising the retail price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), I cannot imagine that he foresaw the massive uproar that would immediately follow this decision. If he foresaw this state of events, and yet proceeded to announce the policy decision in the manner in which he did, then he is without a doubt a very thoughtless fellow who has no business holding high office. If on the other hand he did not, then he is a very unwise fellow, who still has no business holding high office. Whatever his considerations may have been, it is clear that this policy announcement, at this time and under these circumstances may very well represent the most fundamental miscalculation of the Jonathan Presidency till date. What is truly sad however is the realisation that unless urgent steps are taken by the government, by civil society and by the Nigerian people, this season of insanity will by the end of this administration be considered the best of times.

Let me state clearly and without equivocation that I do not support the government’s decision to end the subsidy regime. I am not ideologically opposed to removing subsidy at some point in the future, providing that certain steps are taken in advance and certain infrastructure is put in place. My objection to this decision, taken by Presidential fiat is a consequence of the fact that I, like many Nigerians no longer trust the government. I do not believe the arguments that have been proffered by this administration in favour of this policy. I do not agree with the manner in which this very important policy decision was announced, and I most certainly do not agree with the government’s reaction to the numerous protests that have heralded the decision.

I no longer trust the government because the history of our recent democratic experiment cannot be told without reference to the endless broken promises that have been our lot since 1999. I no longer trust government, because my government thinks it is a good idea to spend 76% of our national budget on recurrent expenditure, financing the lifestyle of the wealthy and well-connected men and women who parade the various halls of power in the nation’s capital like peacocks in mating season. I no longer trust my government because, in the midst of the biggest crisis to beset his administration, my President thought it a good idea to lead a contingent of the well fed and happy to South Africa to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the African National Congress (ANC). I no longer trust my government because my President who campaigned on the theme of transformation decided to launch his agenda by bringing back into government many of the men and women who were primary architects of the failed policies that have left millions of my countrymen impoverished in the midst of plenty. Evil men whose actions have left an entire generation of young people walking the streets of every Nigerian city without hope, without a future, carrying envelopes stuffed full with certificates and qualifications, emblems of their broken dreams. I no longer trust government and neither do you.

I do not believe the arguments proffered in support of this policy because half of them are quite simply illogical if taken to their conclusion and the other half are based on false premise. This administration has argued correctly that the subsidy regime has entrenched a culture of massive corruption and has succeeded in enriching a few very well connected Nigerians at the expense of the rest of the country. We all know this, we’ve known this for years and in some cases we know who the recipients of the loot are. The administration further argues that having discovered evidence of widespread corruption, it is of the opinion that ending the subsidy regime is a necessary step towards eradicating corruption from our system of government. I would imagine that where there is evidence of widespread corruption, it is the responsibility of an honest government to bring before the court of law such evidence and ensure that the perpetrators of these corrupt acts are convicted and punished adequately. How is it then that Mr. President imagines that the best way to end corruption in the downstream oil sector is to allow those who have benefited most from the looting of our nation to go home and enjoy their wealth in relative peace and quiet whilst the rest of the citizens are put through unnecessary suffering.

Furthermore, the logic of this policy decision seems to suggest that this government’s approach to managing problems is to throw the baby out with the bath water. That is, rather than finding the loopholes that allow corrupt practices to exist in the subsidy regime, and developing ways to plug those holes, throw away the entire regime instead. If this logic is applied to every sector of government, the Federal Contracts process will have to be scrapped. The Federal Government of Nigeria will have to cease awarding contracts of any kind because every Nigerian knows that the vast majority of contracts awarded by the Federal Government are so weighed down by the cost of kickbacks and other miscellaneous expenditure that the eventual cost of executing the contract may not be up to 30% of the value of the contract award. Also, the administration will at some point have to seek a constitutional amendment to ban the Nigerian Police for there is no other institution that reveals in more sordid detail the magnitude of the problem of corruption in our country. In the face of unprovoked and unsolved attacks by faceless religious fanatics whom the government have spectacularly failed to apprehend or punish, perhaps, this administration might in time, come to the conclusion that a complete ban on religion is the proper response to religious violence. The sheer insanity of the above paragraph ought to reflect to some extent the alarming absurdity of this policy and the justifications so far offered on its behalf.

The government has also argued that this policy decision will free up scare resources which will in turn allow for new investment in infrastructure, education, security and other critical sectors. In theory this is true. However, it is unlikely that this will turn out to be the case. This administration, like all the others before it is larger than it ought to be. Bloated, I think is the right word. Across the three arms of government, waste, greed and corruption have severely reduced the funding available to the government to try to fulfil some of the promises made during the elections. Huge sums of money that would in saner climes go towards capital projects are spent on administrative costs and recurrent expenditure. Mr. President has neither the will nor the desire to put a stop to this orgy. Hence the need to create new revenue streams by removing the one socio-economic safety net provided by the Nigerian government to the Nigerian people. Today, the administration asks us to believe that a government with such a proven history of profligacy will change its practice overnight, and that it will shrug quickly into a culture of thrift as if it were merely a new coat to be worn at a moment’s notice. Like most Nigerians, I find that hard to believe. Who can blame us?

On too many occasions I have listened to agents of the government talk of deregulation as if it were a magic pill. They say deregulation will open the market to competition and market forces which will in time drive the pump price of PMS down and encourage the construction of new refineries. Somehow, these people fail to remember that the market for Automated Gear Oil (AGO) also known as diesel has been deregulated for years, yet the price has gone up consistently, and in that time no new refineries producing AGO have been constructed in the country. This government will have you believe that the market forces are omnipotent, all seeing and can guarantee perfect outcomes. What they fail to tell you is that the cost of building a modern refinery is very high. Consequently, such projects often require government funding as well as foreign investment to be executed. The government has no interest in building new refineries and foreign investment is not forthcoming. In the face of global economic uncertainty, savvy investors would rather not have billions of dollars of investor funds sitting in Nigeria. I can hardly fault them for that. This is the reason why though the market in AGO has long been deregulated, the Nigerian landscape still isn’t littered with AGO refining plants. This partly explains why Nigeria still hasn’t become the petrochemical products manufacturing hub of Africa, despite the fact that this sector has never been regulated. Fellow Nigerians, there is no reason in the short, medium or long term to imagine that the situation will be different this time around.

I do not believe that President Jonathan is an evil man intent on inflicting the maximum amount of suffering on Nigerian people during his four year term. It stands to reason therefore that in pursuing this policy, he is convinced that his actions are in the best interest of the country he has been elected to serve. If so, how does one begin to explain the ridiculous manner this policy was unveiled to the people? Every passing observer of politics and state craft knows that whenever the government of the day is putting together a policy package that does not immediately strike a populist note, the policy makers and the communicators go the extra mile to shroud the unpopular policy with layers of palliatives and other feel good medicine. With the right strategy, with proper communication, bad policy can be made to at the very least look pleasant.

It is therefore necessary to ask, who in the Presidency thought it was a good idea to go before the Nigerian people on the 1st of January 2012 and tell them that their cost of living is about to increase three fold? Who amongst the President’s many advisers thought it was a good idea to announce this policy six days after a group of Christians celebrating Christmas Mass were massacred by terrorists in a church some thirty minutes away from the seat of government? How is it that the rash of interviews and palliatives being unveiled after the fact were not done in advance of this decision? I will tell you why, our government thinks too little of us. Nobody in this administration thought for one moment that the Nigerian people will rise up in the way they have to challenge the government. This is a tragedy. We are governed by people who think of us as no more than placemats to be trampled upon without repercussion or injury.

If President Jonathan really had any regard for the opinions, feelings and interests of the Nigerian people, greater effort would have been made to reach out, to educate, and to communicate the perceived necessity of this policy. If this administration had any regard for the Nigerian people, the subsidy reinvestment committee that was hastily announced after the fact would have been inaugurated in October and would by January 2012 have unveiled an integrated development plan showing in great detail to what use the government intends to put the savings that will now accrue to it as a consequence of this decision. If this government had any regard for the Nigerian people, the President would never insult our intelligence by proposing a 20 percent cut to the salaries of senior politicians when we all know that the real waste can’t be cut by reducing the salary bill, but by limiting or removing entirely the extras, the accommodation allowance, the clothing allowance, the three car convoys required to carry every minister from house to office. If this administration had any regard for us, Mr. President would not have travelled out of the country for a party two days after proposing that foreign trips be cut to the barest minimum. If Mr. President respected the people he has been elected to serve, he would not think it right to ask us again to sacrifice for nation building, as if the blood of the innocent shed during the elections that brought him to power were not enough.

In the beginning I mentioned that my opposition to the government’s decision to remove the subsidy on PMS was not borne out of any ideological preference for a permanent subsidy regime, it is in fact a direct reaction to the way and manner this government has gone about implementing the policy. This is not a contradictory position as some might soon allege. The policy of subsidising the cost of PMS, AGO and other fuels was intended in the beginning merely as a stop gap solution to help manage the pump price of these products until such a time when we are able to develop sufficient local refining capacity to ensure that our needs are met and at affordable prices. The subsidy regime by design and definition was always intended to expire at some date in the future. The criteria being that we must be able to refine enough to meet our domestic needs and that those needs are met at affordable prices. It’s been two decades since this policy was first announced yet these criteria haven’t been met. In that time, billions of dollars have been expended on the subsidy regime, with the vast majority of these sums lost to fraud and over invoicing by the importers, with the active connivance of government officials. For the last two decades, the government has been effectively transferring a significant part of its budget from the federation account to the pockets of a few individuals. Of course this state of events cannot be expected to last forever. It defies all economic sense. The problem we have today is that this administration came in on a massive gale of goodwill, promising transformation in near messianic tones. And for the most part, we believed. We allowed ourselves to be deluded by the personal story of the man who went to school with no shoes and had now come bearing the promise of fresh air.

In the spirit of transformation, wouldn’t it have been ideal for this President to make it the first priority of his administration to ensure that the criteria mentioned above are met within the first year or two of his Presidency? Massive investment aimed at improving the current refining capacity of our existing refineries while at the same time constructing two new refineries would have been the ideal starting point. Such a policy decision would have earned the government an inestimable well of goodwill and would have kept us all from experiencing the upheavals we now have to live through. That this was not done, that this wasn’t to my knowledge considered is evidence of a massive failure of leadership. That Mr President chose to throw us into the deep end without first providing us with life vests is a repudiation of his own transformation message.

I did not vote for President Jonathan or any other candidate in the last Presidential elections because I did not at the time have the chance to vote. However, I did not at the time wish to vote for him, and if the elections were held today I assure you the case will still be the same. He is nevertheless, Mr President, my President and deserves my respect. Civility in the face of disagreement is essential to a healthy democracy. I do not agree with many of my fellow countrymen who have in anger and frustration resorted to calling the President of our Republic many unprintable names in the public domain. I respect your right to be angry, I respect your right to protest but administrative and leadership failures of this government should not be used as camouflage to diminish the prestige of the office.

Having said that, let me conclude by reminding us of the words of Hubert Humphrey, a great American liberal and statesman who in his last public speech said “the Moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped”. By February, it’ll be two years since Dr. Goodluck Jonathan assumed the Presidency, first in an acting capacity and then substantively. In that time his administration has failed to articulate a plan for the future of our children. There is no plan for the care and upkeep of the aged. The sick, the needy and the handicapped have been left literally on the highways to fend for themselves. This government and this President have failed the moral test of leadership. With each passing day, it becomes all the more painfully obvious that Mr President either doesn’t appreciate the awesome burden of the Presidency or is utterly overwhelmed by it. Either way, he’s the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place and Nigeria can no longer afford him.

•Moghalu wrote in from Abuja.