“A blemish may be removed from a diamond by careful polishing, but evil words once spoken cannot be effaced.” — Confucius (551– 479) BCE
The quote above in several respects refers to the situation in which we have found ourselves. On May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu spoke evil words into our economy by unthinkingly announcing the withdrawal of subsidy on petrol, an action that has viciously ruined many businesses and made life and living very unbearable. To put it in another way, the pursuit of happiness under the Tinubu administration has become rocket science; only those especially gifted in the cognitive realm seem able to make ends meet.
Yet, it remains baffling that a man who forwarded a convincing argument against subsidy removal in 2012 when President Goodluck Jonathan attempted it could do it in such a cavalier, insouciant manner. Those words: “Fuel subisdy is gone” is at the root of the nation’s seemingly intractable economic issues today. Worse, it seems as if the president and his men have run out of options to efface those words.
Since June 2023, the Tinubu administration has resorted to economic management by palliatives, all of which have had the effect of trying to fetch water from a stream with a basket. Daily, billions of naira are being spent on palliatives that are achieving little or zero effect, as it amounts to trying to give the people fish, instead of teaching them how to fish. The palliatives, mostly in form of bags of rice and other grains are not even getting to the people. Where efforts are made to get the palliative rice to people, it has been found that a neighbourhood of about six or seven streets get to share just one or two bags of rice. How will they share it? One cup per head?
And what effect will that have on the prices of other things needed to make the rice a meal? In addition, the CNG roll-out promised more than a year ago is yet to materialise; forget the launch of 30 buses earlier in the week. In any case, how will 30 CNG buses impact transportation in Abuja alone, talk less other cities? Have the issues around CNG uptake been resolved? Where are the conversion kits? Will they be affordable? How many mechanics know how to handle engines running on CNG? And, most important, where is the gas? The president said that conversion kits will be made available at little or no cost. How will they get to the people? Is it not through the same mechanism of palliative rice distribution? Doesn’t that mean the people will either not get them or they will get them at astronomical prices?
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.” — Sophocles (497/496 – 406/405 BC )
I commend the words of the Greek tragedian, Sophocles, above, to the president and his men. Perhaps Sophocles had Nigeria in mind when he penned his immortal words. Nobody is above mistake; the president might have thought that it was better to display executive machismo from Day One than to ponder issues. It has turned out to be a mistake, and a very costly one indeed. In fact, the costs of that mistake of May 29, 2023 are still mounting, and we are all paying very dearly and with compound interest. President Tinubu might still wriggle out of this by backtracking and seeing what to do to rescue himself and the rest of us, rather than continue grandstanding on the propriety of what clearly was an error.
The only problem I have from where I’m sitting is that I don’t see any spark that might ignite a fire of rescue at the moment. Maybe it will come later. Even the hope raised through local refining by the Port Harcourt and Dangote refineries is dimming, if information in the public domain is anything to go by. For the sixth time, resumption date for the Port Harcourt Refinery has been shifted. It is getting clearer that the product importation cabal is unrelenting in seeing to it that local refining does not resume, and the president seems impotent about it.
“The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.” — Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755).
I sincerely hope that the president and his men in government, including other members of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, have not forgotten that the campaign was about “Renewed Hope Agenda.” In all sincerity, can anybody in the APC honestly say that the president and his party have renewed hope for anybody in the last 14 months? Are the politicians flying agbadas along the corridors of power aware that the experience on the streets is referred to as “renewed hopelessness?”
Let President Tinubu and his men in government, including members of the APC at the federal and state levels, be reminded that turning Nigerians to beggars is not what they voted for. For how long will government be distributing satchets of rice to the people? Governance by palliatives is unmitigated failure and must be seen as such. A new approach to governance that truly renews hope is needed and President Tinubu is hereby tasked to start afresh and rescue himself and the rest of us from the looming calamity. TGIF.
