Anyone who is pretending that Nigerians can endure this punishment much longer is wallowing in self-deceit. The Tinubu tax is perverse and just as he admonished Nigerians in 2012, it is the duty of all citizens to peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition to the draconian measure.
Shortly after President Bola Tinubu delivered his inaugural speech on May 29, a friend of mine called from Abuja to enquire if I listened to our newly minted President. I didn’t watch Tinubu deliver his inaugural speech but I had read the full text before my friend called.
I told him I didn’t watch Mr President deliver the speech and there was a tinge of disappointment in his voice. “But you should have,” he retorted accusatorily.
Why, I enquired? “I think we finally have a president who understands what the issues are. His speech ticked all the relevant boxes and addressed most, if not all, of the problems bedevilling Nigeria,” he riposted.
I chuckled even as I wondered whether there was something the president said off-the-cuff while delivering his speech that was not in the one I read. And, indeed, there was.
Most Nigerians are either naïve or hypocritical. While the naïve are easily deceived, they, nevertheless, mean well and want the best for the country but self-serving leaders exploit their naivety for self-aggrandisement. My friend is naïve and was simply blown away by Tinubu’s vacuous promises at his inauguration.
But the hypocrites are the real problem. They wallow in self-deceit and lie to themselves. Lying to others is bad enough but lying to oneself is the worst of all lies because the damage is enormous.
And what did Tinubu say that blew my friend away?
He promised that his administration will govern on behalf of the citizens and not rule over them; to make security topmost priority for his administration; assured Nigerians that his administration will create one million jobs through digital economy, and promised accessible and stable electricity by ultimately allowing states to generate and distribute power.
But, most importantly, he vowed to ensure a unified foreign exchange rate; make food available at affordable cost; before blurting out, like a possessed man, as he confessed in Paris during a recent trip, that “the fuel subsidy is gone.”
“When I got to the podium, I was possessed with courage and I said subsidy is gone,” Tinubu told his Nigerian audience in Paris.
But what possessed him, I dare say, was not the spirit of courage. It was sheer hubris. It is only extreme haughtiness that would push a president to making such a consequential pronouncement at his inauguration – an auspicious and solemn occasion – even when his prepared speech only talked about “phasing out” the subsidy, which was what he actually promised in his “Renewed Hope 2023” manifesto.
Two days after that presidential faux pas, the Mele Kyari-led Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) jacked up the pump price of petrol by over 200 per cent from N195 to average of N573 per litre. While Lagos had the least price hike of N488, in far-flung Northeast capital cities like Maiduguri and Damaturu, the product sold for N577 per litre.
Instantly, prices of goods and services quadrupled. When organised Labour threatened industrial action, the Federal Government not only got the National Industrial Court presided over by Justice O. Y. Anuwe, to restrain them but also primed the Southwest and Northern caucuses to break away from the Comrade Joe Ajaero-led Nigeria Labour Congress if it proceeded on strike as threatened.
It was a classic divide-and-rule gambit, typical of autocrats. Those adorning Tinubu in borrowed robes know they are lying to themselves. As David Pilling, Africa Editor of the Financial Times, wrote recently, “Tinubu has appeared to epitomise all that is wrong with Nigeria’s governing class.”
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There are some people, though, who genuinely believe that he will do much better than Buhari. I was persuaded to think so too. Not anymore! His resort to the much-discredited Buharinomics of conditional cash transfer to the so-called poorest of the poor in dealing with the fallouts of the fuel subsidy removal, what many have also dubbed Tinubunomics, is a big cause for concern.
Like Buhari, Tinubu’s idea of palliative was to use N500 billion in paying N8,000 monthly to a phantom 12 million poor Nigerian households for six months. That will be a paltry N48,000 for the period. To add insult to injury, the 469 national legislators will get N70 billion of the booty, which if shared equally, will give each member N149 million, a move which the NLC said was tantamount to robbing the poor to pay the rich.
Though Tinubu, on Tuesday, July 18, ordered a review of the N8,000 conditional cash transfer programme due to overwhelming public criticism, there is nothing on ground now to cushion the prevailing hardship.
In the statement announcing the suspension of the conditional cash transfer programme, Dele Alake, special adviser on special duties, communications and strategy said Tinubu has also directed that the whole gamut of the palliative package of government be unveiled to Nigerians without saying what they are other than “immediate release of fertilisers and grains to approximately 50 million farmers and households respectively in all the 36 states and the FCT.”
This is sheer deceit. Where are the grains? How many bags will each of the so-called 50 million households get and for how long?
Coming a day after the NNPCL, for the second time in less than two months, hiked, yet again, the pump price of petrol by at least 18 per cent from N513 to N617 per litre, Tinubu has shown absolute lack of capacity to rein in the debilitating economic genie that is already out of the bottle.
Tinubu’s hypocrisy rankles and Nigerians must stop cutting him some slack.
In 2012, then President Goodluck Jonathan with Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the current Director-General of the WTO, as the Finance Minister, rolled out a well-articulated plan to phase out oil subsidy. Tinubu led a rather visceral opposition against the plan.
Describing the subsidy removal as “Jonathan tax,” Tinubu penned an article on January 11, 2012 in his newspaper, The Nation, titled: “Removal of oil subsidy: President Jonathan breaks social contract with the people.”
“By bureaucratic fiat, government made the most fateful economic decision any administration has made since the inception of the Fourth Republic and it has done so with an arrogant wave of the hand as if issuing a minor regulation,” Tinubu wrote.
“Because of the terrible substance of the decision and the haughty style of its enactment, the people feel betrayed and angry. At this moment, we know not to where this anger will lead. In good conscience, we pray against violence. Also in good conscience, it is the duty of every citizen to peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition to this draconian measure that is swiftly crippling the economy more than it will ever cure it.
“By taking this step, government has tossed the people into the depths of the midnight sea. Government demands the people swim to safety under their own power, claiming the attendant hardship will build character and add efficiency to the national economy. It is easy to make these claims when one is dry and on shore. Government would have us believe that every hardship it manufactures for the people to endure is a good thing. This is a lie. The hardships they thrust upon the poor often bear no other purpose than to keep them poor. This is such a time.
“I am not calling President Jonathan an evil man. I do not believe he is perverse. However, the economic ideas controlling him are so misguided that they have a perverse impact. Because he is slave to wrong-headed economics, the people will become enslaved to greater misery. This crisis will bear his name and will be his legacy. The people now pay a steep tax for voting him into office. The removal of the subsidy is the “Jonathan tax.”
In removing subsidy, Tinubu insisted that certain conditions must be met. “First, government needs to clean up and throw away the salad of corruption in the NNPC. Then, proceed to lay the foundation for a mass transit system in the railways and road network with long term bonds and fully develop the energy sector towards revitalizing Nigeria’s economy and easing the burden any subsidy removal may have on the people.”
In a speech he delivered in Kaduna prior to the 2023 elections, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, former CBN governor agreed with Tinubu’s 2012 position on subsidy removal. Tinubu and other APC chieftains were present.
Insisting that whoever was elected president in 2023 must take corrective measures, the former Emir of Kano said: “Tariff in the oil sector has to be corrected. But before we correct that, we have to deal with the opportunities for rent seeking. You have to close off the inflated numbers. And I hope that whoever becomes president in 2023, the first thing to do is to ask NNPC to document and bring evidence for every dollar they took as subsidy.
“They must give the names of the ships that came and we can verify from insurance companies if those ships were in Nigeria on those days. They must bring evidence because that is what the law says. There must be proof before you pay subsidy; there must be proof that you brought in the product at the price you said you bought it.”
None of these was done. Instead, the Group Chief Executive Officer of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, the man who Sanusi said should account for the subsidy paid all these years, went to Aso Rock to tell Nigerians to go to hell, literally.
“What I know is that the market forces will regulate the market; I am also assuring Nigerians that this is the best way to go forward so that we can adjust prices,” he said impetuously.
Truth be told, this “Tinubu tax” is far worse than the “Jonathan tax” and those hoping that by a stroke of luck, the escalating cost of petrol will tank, should perish the thought.
It can only get worse because all the determinant factors – crude oil cost, exchange rate, freight and handling cost, as well as import charges – are escalating. So, if crude oil which costs about $80 per barrel today hits $100 tomorrow, and Naira depreciates to about N1,000 to $1, petrol will sell at over N1,000 per litre in Nigeria.
That will be too steep a price to pay for the Tinubu tax. Anyone who is pretending that Nigerians can endure this punishment much longer is wallowing in self-deceit. The Tinubu tax is perverse and just as he admonished Nigerians in 2012, it is the duty of all citizens to peacefully demonstrate and record their opposition to the draconian measure.
Admonishing Nigerians to further tighten their belts and make more sacrifices when government officials have shown no appetite to heed their own advice smacks of insensitivity and cruelty.
In the midst of this horrendous suffering, Tinubu has shown no inclination whatsoever of cutting the cost of governance. Lawmakers are still enjoying their jumbo pays and other mouth-watering perks when the Nigerian masses can no longer transport themselves to work, not to talk of putting food on the table. That is contemptuous of the people and a recipe for anarchy.
