It has been very clear right from the onset that the Federal Government's fiscal plan of withdrawing fuel subsidy next year is not the idea of President Goodluck Jonathan.Nevertheless, he will have to bear whatever consequences that may arise from it. This is the major reason why the president must ignore the minority clan of well-heeled elite and stand with the Nigerian masses like he promised during the campaign season. To do this, President Jonathan would have to quickly separate reality from cheer logic as being postulated by some of his lieutenants. Like the president himself observed shortly before the nomination of his cabinet, different people are in government for diverse reasons. While some are for service, others are for personal gains. There are still some who seek power just to protect the interests or agenda of third party organisations. Of greater worry are those who stay in government to deliberately give counsel that will pitch the people against government. Quite frankly, the suggestion that government removes fuel subsidy as contained in the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework for 2012 is one of them. This writer does not dismiss the fact that there are gains to be made from the removal of fuel subsidy. Nevertheless, it is quite cheerless to note that the nation's fiscal policy formulators and team of economic advisers have declined to accept the naked fact that a coin does not have only one side. This has caused them not to acknowledge that Nigeria's socio-economic framework is still too fragile to bear the additional burdens that will come with the removal of fuel subsidy. The burden will come in the form of a weakened purchasing power of the middle and low income class workers because the prices of transportation, house rent, foodstuff, education, and health care services, among others, will respond to the jump in the price of fuel. Sadly, some persons either in government or heeled enough to buy fuel even at N200 a litre have been shouting on roof tops that the federal government removed subsidy on diesel and Nigeria did not collapse. On the strength of this, they argue that nothing damaging would happen even if the same thing is done to petrol. Apart from displaying crass misunderstanding of the fundamentals of political governance, the problem with this opinion is that its promoters have deliberately refused to appreciate the major causes of poverty, disease, and crime in Nigeria over the last decade. It is a fact that the increase in the pump price of diesel in 2009 jumped the cost of transportation. It jolted economic permutations because most manufacturers and entrepreneurs rely mainly on diesel-powered trucks to move their goods from factories to their distribution outlets. As expected, the additional cost brought about by the sharp increase in the cost of transportation was effortlessly tied around the necks of consumers. The prices of goods and services climbed up the ladder. Almost immediately, most Nigerians were unable to meet the basic needs of their families owing to the weakening of their purchasing power. For instance, families that survived on N10,000 monthly now needed between N15,000 and N20,000 because the price of almost every product or service that had something to do with diesel had jumped in response to prevailing market forces. The above picture is also an appropriate response to the argument by government that the money saved from the withdrawal of fuel subsidy would be invested in infrastructural development. It is important to point out here that no responsible government will afford to consciously weaken the purchasing power of the citizens in order to develop her infrastructure. Poverty is growing in many developing countries, including Nigeria because attention is not given to the purchasing power of the citizens. Poverty is judged by the level of weakness of the purchasing power of citizens. Unfortunately, our fiscal policy formulators and economic advisers believe job creation is the only way to reduce poverty. There would still be poverty even now that national minimum wage is N18,000 per month. This is because, even N50,000 would not be enough to meet the basic needs of an average Nigerian family of five: father, mother, and three children. These basic needs include feeding, shelter, transportation, education, health care, and socials. It would therefore be suicidal for any government to ignore reality and continue to blindly pursue Western crafted fiscal policies. It would be shocking for many to learn that in 2010, the European Union spent a whopping '57 billion on agricultural development programme. Of this amount, '39 billion was spent on direct subsidies. A total of 40 percent of EU's budget goes to Agricultural and fisheries subsidies. Who is fooling who' The World Bank and IMF are fooling Africans. If advanced democracies do not subsidise fuel, they would subsidise agriculture, housing, transport, or health care. It is left for every government to identify the critical sector to intervene. Frankly, it would be wide of the mark for Nigeria to remove fuel subsidy because Britain or the United States did so. Unfortunately, our fiscal policy formulators and economic experts are mere copy-cats. Perhaps, this was the reason why the late Afrobeat icon, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti advised Africans to follow western polices with caution.
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