Letter to Olusegun Adeniyi of Thisday RE: BUHARI AND THE OLD WOMAN IN KATSINA

RE: BUHARI AND THE OLD WOMAN IN KATSINA - Olusegun Adeniyi, Thisday

Dear Segun,

As usual you covered so much ground in your recent article. Please allow me to dwell only on the issue of fuel subsidy.

How do I get the impression that the people in President Buhari's inner circle are leaking their reasoning for delaying the removal of fuel subsidy through you because they believe that you will do a better job of selling it to the rapidly growing band of critics, which now includes you? Kind of Explainer-in-Chief. For goodness sake, you have done your own bit. Let this regime carry its own burden.

In my opinion piece titled "Gas-to-Power Conundrum" (Sept 2014), I boldly staked a position for the immediate removal of natural gas, fuel (as in petrol) and electricity subsidies. I knew that this was a very unpopular position, but I have never engaged in a popularity contest with the ever posturing Nigerian public figure and pseudo-analyst. For sure, I am not one of them. I actually directly blamed the elite who against their better judgement joined the largely uninformed masses at Gani Fawehinmi Park to torpedo the then planned removal of fuel subsidy. I regret to inform you that I have to date not seen a proper analytical response to my original thesis. Talk of being roundly ignored. Over the course of several interventions, (none of which was published by Thisday), I have also asked for the price of kerosene, indistinguishable from aviation fuel, to be freed from government control. None of the intended benefits ever trickled down to the masses. Meanwhile the market became grossly distorted as a result. The unresolved issue of the continuing abuse of the fuel subsidy scheme is a different kettle of fish. Today Friday, December 4, 2015, I purchased 30litres of petrol from a filling station in Oshodi, Lagos. You should have seen the relief on my face as I most gladly paid N120 per litre. How desperate I was.

I have therefore become quite frustrated when, with the predictable but ignored collapse of government finances, the same activists who graced the rally at Ojota (I don't have to name them) started falling over each other to have their names in print, and on radio/television with the new message, "Yes, it is now the right policy to eliminate fuel subsidy." They say and/or write this viewpoint with a straight face, and without offering any new facts to buttress the change of position. Probably they are counting on the short memory of most Nigerians.

You also wrote, "Nigerians want to know, and indeed deserve to know, what Buhari is doing about the economy and they want to hear it from him." Why then are you allowing President Buhari's handlers to offer us snippets through your column? Is it a matter of plausible deniability? The Buhari presidency should man up and talk directly to us citizens. If we don't like or don't make sense of what we hear or see, we will roundly criticise the government. That's their lot. The team asked for the job. We gave it to them.

I can easily deduce that you wish this new administration well. So do I, without any reservations. It must learn and fast too that all the carry over problems from the Jonathan presidency plus any new ones now belong to President Muhamadu Buhari. His team should please, please get on with the job.