Subsidy Removal: Don’t Increase Misery Of Nigerians, CSO Tells Tinubu

A Lagos-based Civil Society Organisation (CSO), Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL), has cautioned President Bola Tinubu, not to increase the level of misery of Nigerians by removing petrol subsidy.

According to CACOL, most Nigerians are already facing lots of economic challenges, adding that the removal of petrol subsidy would erode the ‘Renewed Hope’ campaign mantra of the president.

The anti-corruption organisation suggested that instead of removing petrol subsidy, Tinubu should rather extend subsidy to agricultural products.

“We would like to advise that Mr. President should not come in to cause agony and increase the level of misery of the people most of whom are already living below the poverty line and who are also looking up to him to proffer solutions to the myriads of problems facing the country. Moreover, the promise of renewed hope would have been eroded if the President carries out his planned suspension of the fuel subsidy regime removal. Instead of removing the subsidy on micro products like fuel, he should rather extend subsidy to other products like foodstuff, the government should create food banks and produce marketing boards to receive all what farmers especially and other food producers harvested from their farms and buy at profitable rates and sell back to the masses at subsidies rates,” CACOL Chairman, Debo Adeniran said in a statement.

Tinubu had during his inaugural speech on Monday, said subsidy for petrol is no longer in existence. A comment that shortly after, has resulted in long queues at filling stations, hike in petrol price and increase in transportation fare across the country.

“On fuel subsidy, the budget I met before I assumed office and what I heard is that there is no provision for subsidy. Fuel subsidy is gone,” he had said.

CACOL argued that removal of petrol subsidy would lead to general increase in the prices of fuel and other related products; general increase in the cost of transportation; general devaluation of the commanding power of wages; and lowering of general living standards.

It also said that it would foist on the people multiple economic discomforts pitiably on the same people who are just coming out of the bad effects of crashing state revenues and variants of poverties of material well-being, the difficulties associated with the recent unavailability of petrol, the hard pains suffered from the lack of cash, resulting from the redesign of Naira by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

““We do not agree with Mr. President that fuel subsidy can no longer justify its ever-increasing costs in the wake of drying resources rather we want to align ourselves with the school of thought that believes that subsidy should not be removed from fuel, it doesn’t matter who uses fuel. Those buying Luxury items like expensive cars/vehicles should be made to pay more at the point of registering their cars and renewing their vehicle papers based on the cost and the age of the vehicle. These sets of people are the ones using petroleum products more. Same policy should apply to those using expensive or high capacity generators who should be made to also register them with the government. All the luxury goods should attract higher taxes and rates, these will generate the needed income that can serve as alternative to the subsidy the president is trying to remove,” Adeniran stated.

By way of compensating the poor “for the crimes of the rich”, CACOL called on the president to ensure that public education system is completely free from the nursery level to first degree level and other levels of education (from Masters’ to Ph.D level) should be generally available to those who can afford it.

The anti-corruption organisation expressed disappointed that Tinubu carried out his threat to remove fuel subsidy without adequate consultations with the various stakeholders and without considering the implications of the decision on the small scale enterprises and majority of the Nigerian people who have been impoverished by the misgovernance of successive governments.

“We would like to use this medium to call on the President to declare his assets, because he has come to equity and he should be seen to have come with clean hands. We want to know his assets and liabilities, and he should make it open to the generality of Nigerians. We are making this demand because we want him to run an open and participatory government and a government that is not shrouded in secrecy. He should also appoint people of competence and impeccable character so that there would be ‘right pegs in right holes’ so that at the end of the day, those of us who have reposed some level of confidence in him would know the indices and indicators we can use to appraise his government, whether to praise it or condemn it.”

“That we seem to be supporting his ascendancy doesn’t mean that when things are commendable we will not commend it and when they are condemnable we will actually condemn whatever misstep we identified. We would also want him to make the implementation of his campaign promises to be SMART so that we may know the parameters to access his performance in office,” the CACOL Boss added.