Removal of Subsidy, A Message to Nigerians
Here is another scenario from a different government, its important to wake up and ensure that we do not protest for selfish reasons, rather let's take a look at the subsidy over the years, subsidy has been removed for a long while it was not announced officially however.
When government announced 97naira benchmark then, you will notice that fuel scarcity was the order of the day, we rarely enjoyed 97naira for long, in reality we bought fuel for 120-140naira, even when president Buhari fixed it at 86.50 naira, we bought it for 150-180, the question we should be asking is that, was the FG still paying subsidy when it was sold for 150? When we noticed slight scarcity and we have 160 as pump price was subsidy suspended?
I think the reality is, do we still want to keep buying at prices higher than 145naira and subsidy continues or we will buy at maximum of 145naira while subsidy will be removed.
I feel this competition introduced is not so welcome by an average Nigerian because we don't want to hear about that word "increase"..
Seriously, if we complain about subsidy removal we have to understand that there was no subsidy before, they only played pranks on us, the marketers collected their " share " of subsidy and it was not effected.
While do we cry out when we never had stability of petrol price for five months at a go, there was always scarcity and marketers cashed on this.
I wonder why NLC waited till this official announcement to act, NLC never dedicated one day to raise the knowledge of the average man on the street and raise his interest about asking questions on how our money is spent, take actions that will reveal if we really enjoyed subsidy or not, I think Nigerians need not be fooled, this is an action we have to weigh on .
In all sincerity, if I will nail the federal government, I will nail them because current leaders condemned same removal during era of PDP not because they didn't trust the government but because they said removal of subsidy is wrong economically and we all believed.
Trade unions should not just see this as an opportunity to be seen and heard, they should see it as an opportunity to fight for many right things, if we are going to fight for subsidy, let's really ensure that PMS is subsidized!
We can't keep wasting government's money on things that rarely impact us.
If we fight for increase in wages, we must ensure that we fight anomalies in our market systems, if we say we will allow the subsidy removal in return for 56000 naira minimum wage, let's ensure we are not deceiving ourselves, let's think it straight, 560000 naira may end up to be 18000naira, there maybe no difference, we can't keep fighting ourselves over policies, we should fight for effectiveness!
I really want to say I am not angry at subsidy removal because there was no subsidy before except I can be proven wrong.
Olanrewaju Oyedeji
National Chairman Nigerian Campus Editors',
President, Association of Campus Journalists OAU, Coordinator Proudly Naija Initiative
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