Nigeria’s Current Politics: Much ado about irrelevance

WEDNESDAY COLUMN BY USSIJU MEDANER

info@medaner.com, justme4justice@yahoo.com

Right now, as a nation, we have gotten to the point where we must tell ourselves the truth point blank, instead of continuing to deceive ourselves, especially playing politics with issues of national development. Enough of forcing the public to see what politicians want them to see and spreading the narratives that yield nothing but bolstering political relevancies of the sources without any significant benefits to the nation, but rather injuries to our survival paths. It is about time we took the narrative of our national growth and development away from politics. One, it has severely weakened the capacity of Nigerians to listen to and agree with the ingenuity of government policies, regardless of how impactful they may be. Secondly, it has provided the foundation for the opposition to attack all great policies that would have transformed the country for the better, until we virtually lost out on the altar of toxic political plays.
At the outset of the Tinubu Administrations, there were policy runouts; the fuel subsidy removal, the currency floating and a number of others. These policies however appear stringent; as the masses do not possess the economic capacities to fathom the need for almost all of them, and despite the government attempts at explanations and education, the voice of the opposition and self-proclaimed activists who thrive on antagonising government actions, roar more with the population and we find ourselves at the point where the government gets no much support from the street. That was the beginning; the idea that policies take time to bud and yield results was no longer tenable. We have no room for the benefit of doubt. We just roll with the lies from the opposing political players and those who fed large on persistent criticisms of policies.
But this is the time for the truth and realities of the policies that we have to deal with now, whether we like it or not. For decades before now, development economists within and outside the country, be it international organisations and national development metrics have concluded that Nigeria would not be starting to leap economically and developmentally, until the question of fuel subsidy removal is placed on the table and effectively answered. The need to remove the subsidy was over-presented across the board for decades until 2023 when it was finally removed. Responding to that, the first attempt at removing the subsidy came in 1999, when the then President Olusegun Obasanjo decided to deregulate the downstream sector of the nation’s oil industry; but unfortunately, the plan was halfway abandoned as the government bow to pressure from public resistance and protest, though not without a slight increase in the pump price of the products.
Since then, it has been the path every other administration wanted to take. In 2012, President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration announced a partial removal of fuel subsidy, leading to an increase in the pump price of the products. Unfortunately, as before, the government bowed to the pressure and halfway rescinded its decision. The Muhammadu Buhari administration continued with the attempt to rid the country of the unproductive subsidy regime with the announcement of a gradual removal of fuel subsidy in May 2016 that led to a significant increase in pump prices. As usual, nationwide protests forced a rescind of the decision. The Buhari administration eventually towards the end of its second and final term, tactically removed the fuel subsidy, and all the way from the stringent non provision for the servicing of the subsidy regime from June 2023 onwards. The Bola Ahmed Tinubu Administration put a final end to the regime with the inauguration day pronouncement that the fuel subsidy is gone.
The end of the subsidy regime has forever been a controversial topic as much as it is politically sensitive. While arguments for and against it remain multifaceted, bothering on economic considerations for the survival of the citizens whose survival has for long depends on the regime, there is the social implications and the fact that it would become a political weapon for discrediting others and winning elections; hence, necessitating the unworkable regime must end.
For almost the last two decades, we did not know the volume of PMS we were consuming as a nation. In 2012, without a drastic change in population, the country’s daily consumption rose suddenly from below 30 million litres per day to almost 60 million litres per day. As at 2021, the figure had risen to 66.8 million litres per day. Even during the COVID-19 period, the figure stayed put. All along, the Nigeria government paid subsidy on the recorded but unsubstantiated volume daily. Immediately after the subsidy removal in 2023, the daily consumption figure dropped from 69.54 million litres per day to 49.48 million litres per day and currently, as at September 2024, it stands at 30 million litres per day.
Consequently, we started seeing the reality of the nation’s daily consumption after the subsidy removal. Our domestic consumption has never gone up beyond 40 million litres per day, but the government has consistently paid for the subsidies for fuel that were never brought into the country to the tune of a minimum of 26 million litres on the average daily. That was a huge corruption at play. During the same period, from whatever was imported into the country, an average of 15.6 million litres were daily smuggled to all our surrounding countries after subsidy payments by the Nigeria government.
It does appear that as much as the subsidy regime was seriously needed by the average, low income Nigerians, it has always been the same elite and a few corrupt elements at the top that were benefiting from the regime; by heavily stealing billions of naira on a daily basis. The subsidy regime needed to go as the country was wasting hard earned resources only to enrich the rich and the powerful under the guise of subsidising fuel consumption for the general public. It is important we all know this and continue rallying support for the removal to work.
It is similar business with the naira-dollar exchange rate in the country. The refusal to float the naira over the last decades took us to the point where the order of the day was the popular yet infamous round tripping drama. We witnessed individuals, manufacturers and others accessing dollars directly from the Central Bank at the official rate, for the purpose of the importation of approved commodities, only to turn them out at the black markets at outrageous rates, making stupendous profit. This coupled with the craze to store wealth in dollars by everyone, created the scenario where we almost permanently have too much naira pursuing few dollars, putting the naira at a huge disadvantage. One of the new policies of the present Administration was simply a decision to expose the naira-dollar relationship for what it is as the starting point towards proffering a lasting acceptable response. With the truth unraveled, we are beginning to see such actions, including huge drop in the need for foreign exchange to get imported petroleum products into the country, dealing with local refineries in naira, and the increase of non oil exports which is expected to shove up the naira strength. And ultimately, in a matter of time in the nearest future, the naira, would on its own, gets much stronger in its relationship with other currencies. This path, we cannot but show reasonable support until we get the desired results.
Then, we have the serious challenge of food insecurity. What do we do? Should we continue the blame game or rally round to provide a solution until Nigerians can easily access and afford basic staples in the right quantities and qualities. The problem is with us; what do we do? I have repeatedly said that we must get to the point that all Nigerians are to begin to farm, no matter how small the land and space and the locations. We have gotten to the point where we cannot afford to continue to give excuses of insecurity in the rural areas as the reason we cannot farm enough to feed ourselves; it is time we begin to consider urban farming; engage in rooftop farming, vertical farming, container farming, backyard farming and other forms of urban farming. We should produce food wherever it is possible to do so.
But more importantly, we cannot afford to continue subjecting and limiting our farming to only rainfall induced farming. At a point in time when climatic change has made rainfall irregular and unpredictable, our farming must be driven predominantly by irrigation; as this enables us to have three farming seasons in a single calendar year.
On food security, as I have said in almost all my write-ups, it is about time the Nigeria government partners with NYSC to the effect of mobilising the over twenty thousand corps members annually to the farms, and across the so many value chains of agricultural practices to produce foods into the national food reserves and for immediate consumptions as would be determined by the government.
I will be rounding up this piece today by telling all Nigerians that this is the time for us to unite to provide unanimous solutions to our challenges. At each and every corner where we stay, we should contribute our quota willingly. And it is about time we stopped the toxic culture of playing politics with national challenges; it is time we stopped the political blame games aimed at manipulating the national problems to amass support for winning elections. This is not patriotism.

GOD BLESS THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA!