The response of a gubernatorial candidate to a pre-election debate question would be a good note to commence this intervention. He had been asked what he intends to do in his first hundred days in office. He was frank and straight: “I don’t know what funds will be available for me to work with. I cannot make promises when I hardly know what I will find in office, maybe the state is heavily indebted, I don’t know. I will simply use the first hundred years to stabilize.”
That was devoid of what we call politics here, going by Adams Oshiomhole’s recant of previous comments about Pasor Osagie Ize-Iyamu, whom he had taken to the cleaners in 2016. He now wants the people to discountenance what he had said in the name of politics. In 2015, Muhammadu Buhari was he presidential candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC). His was a mass movement, especially in the northern parts, until Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu brought a large chunk of the western parts into the deal, resulting ultimately in the exit of Goodluck Jonathan from the Presidency.
At the campaign rounds, Buhari let Nigerians know that he had been Minister of Petroleum in the past, and thus knew a thing or two about the industry. Little wonder he has combined the Presidency with being substantive Minister of Petroleum. He had said, at campaign rallies, that the term ‘Petroleum Subsidy’ was a scam because no such thing existed. One of his confidants and die-hard supporter, the late Professor Tam David-West, was emphatic that premium motor spirit (PMS) should cost less than the N97 for which it was sold at that time. He said it should sell at N40 per litre. He, too, had a dealing with the industry, having operated as a Minister of Petroleum in the presidency of Ibrahim Babangida. It was such high hopes that saw President Buhari ascend the throne, at a point of ignorance about what awaited him in office.
He probably got there to find that things had moved far away from what he knew as Petroleum Minister, but he did not eat the humble pie and tell Nigerians that what he met in office would make his promises a lie. Nigerians are either too weary to go into the streets, and shut down the nation, or those at the pivotal end of such protests have learnt that they probably led protests for no reason. Nigerians have simply swallowed new fuel prices and have moved on with their lives of suffering and smiling. They have looked with bewilderment as a government that promised a positive change presides over increased pain. Just as the people took the pain of higher petrol prices, and were adjusting to higher transport fares, they were hit with the news that they were to pay higher tariffs for electricity. It was like paying higher for darkness. As the tariffs stand on the latest upward adjustment, Nigeria now ranks among the five countries with highest payment of electricity tariffs in Africa, higher than nations without the hydro and thermal resources available in Nigeria.
President Buhari says he is doing his best, and that the route the nation is now headed is the best for it. No one can say with certainty if that best is good enough. But the stark reality is that the people are under the weight of greater pain than they were when the promise for change came. One minister said the government did not know how badly the nation had sunk into financial abyss when this regime came to power. If the nation was tottering on the brink on Buhari’s ascendancy to power, it was his duty to pull it out of the doldrums, not to give excuses. The people brought this government to put things right. Anyone who runs and looks back is bound to stumble and fall. There is no point in casting aspersions on a regime you have driven out of power. The task is to fix the wrongs, not to look back in agony. The responsibility of leadership is to make a place better than you met it. Such situations task the brain, demand new strategies and methods.
There seems to be a level of confusion on how to help economically weak people in the chain. The Vice President made a public show of giving cash to market women with an expectation for repayment. No one bothered to find out the nature of what they did, and if they could pay back. Now the programme is as good as grounded because the people have not paid back. The government has a school feeding programme, which is said to have drawn more pupils to school, but has barely reached those many people. The regime has a soft spot for the less privileged but it would seem that it has no resources to meet their needs but would still nip at the periphery, and want to be perceived as catering for them.
Propaganda and media muzzling has come to its limit. The President has been in the saddle since 2015, and has now seen that subsidy is no fluke, no fraud, and that things only seem better on the other side. Nigerians have gone into a cocoon of hardship, and no one knows what manner their reaction would take, if it ever happens. The other day, the labour unions held a meeting with ministers of Petroleum and Labour and Productivity on President Buhari’s instruction. The President told the ministers to tell the labour unions how Nigeria has teetered so badly that increments in the prices of petrol and electricity have become inevitable. It was symbolic that the Presidential Economic Advisory Committee met the same day, and promised to map out strategies of bringing more Nigerians out of the poverty bracket. It was ironic that policies of price hike, which would reduce spending power and impoverish more people would be contemplated by a government intent on reducing poverty level. It was like people walking on parallel lines, and hoping to get to the same point. This road will lead to more poverty.