Double Wahala for the President

I was not exactly a Fela fan. But whether you loved or hated Fela, you could not miss the genius in him – his sense of organisation in apparent chaos during the hey days of “Kalakuta Republic”. I always marvelled at how much control he had over his orchestra and the harmony of the diverse instruments and the rather vulgar choreography of his queens wriggling and gyrating in elevated boxes framing the stage. If you could stand the thick haze or should I say fog from smoke streaming from several fat wraps of you know what, the music that emerged from the stage was breathtaking!
And then you take in the sobering lyrics of his songs! I remember songs like Beast of No Nation, where he castigated the western developed nations for their hypocrisy in supporting apartheid and then preaching human rights to Africans. There is another song – I don’t remember the title or the lyrics. But it spoke about a poor man who was saving to buy a fan so that his windowless, damp “face-me-I face you” room became a little more bearable. Each time the poor man saved up to the price he was told the last time he went window shopping, the price would have gone up – and the vicious cycle continued. The poor man never bought that fan.
But the Fela song I remember in the wake of the failed premium motor spirit subsidy removal strategy of the President was the one in which a funeral convoy had an accident – and there was confusion everywhere: double Wahala for dead body and the owner of dead body!
Imagine the dismay and aggravated sorrow of the chief mourner as he tried to contain the situation and restore some order in the well choreographed last rites of his loved one. Fela did not tell us what happened thereafter, but certainly this did not go according to the plans of the chief mourner.
I sympathise with President Jonathan and his field troops particularly Petroleum Minister Deziani Alison-Madueke and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo Iweala. The three of them got the most bashing from Nigerians at home and abroad and were at the receiving end of some of the most unprintable things ever written about a Nigerian leader.
I know that it may not be popular to say this. But I am convinced the president and his economic management team were on the right track. The government cannot be wilfully funding corruption and borrowing money to pay for a profligate venture. The subsidy as it plays out is like putting your savings in a blender and pulverizing it and because some people would be angry if the practise was stopped, we needed to keep doing that.
Now everyone is an expert on subsidy – annoying talking heads on television with pedestrian arguments. The two arms of the National Assembly have weighed in with public hearings, which obviously derived most of the information being enquired into from the KPMG audit of the oil industry commissioned by the Federal Government. One wonders if there may be any new findings, apart from the entertainment and sensational news headlines the hearings have provided. And even if there are radically new findings, the National Assembly exercises legislative and not executive powers of government. The same forces that delayed action on the KPMG report are still in play because the reality is that change intended to remove patronage and corruption will always be resisted by powerful vested interests. And they can only be chipped away one block at a time in a steady and determined effort.
Let us even set aside the story about the average poor man not getting the benefits of subsidy (if we want to be honest, PMS hardly sold at N65 per litre outside Lagos and Abuja. Ironically, at no time in the last five years did fuel sell less than N90 per litre in most of the South-South and South East geo-political zones which produced most of the oil and hosts three of the four refineries in the country).
We should all ponder how we want to create the investment environment to attract the huge capital and managerial skills required to develop a modern downstream oil and gas industry. Achieving this enabling environment is the only route to Nigeria’s industrialisation. As a nation blessed with huge reserves of crude oil and natural gas, the most effective and fastest route to industrialisation is the petrochemical, power generation and other derivative downstream industries. Distorting the system with subsidy and patronage is cosmetic, compared to the millions of jobs we are exporting by exporting liquefied natural gas and crude petroleum. Imagine the refining 2.5million barrels of crude oil per day in Nigeria – at least 150 refineries employing millions and paying taxes to government and developing the communities where they are located et cetera. Or imagine complete processing of 200 trillion cubic feet of gas into electricity generation, industrial chemicals, plastics and thousands of other manufactured products in factories spread across the country.
America’s wealth today rests on employment of her citizens and all the government does is to create the environment and encourage American corporations and others from around the world to invest in factories and plants that will employ millions of her citizens. The telecommunications and aviation industries in Nigeria have demonstrated this well founded economic management philosophy.
Jonathan is by far more patriotic than many of those who rained insults at him for daring to correct an anomaly that MUST be corrected if Nigeria is to move forward. Just like the owner of the dead body, he must have been very disappointed with our attitude to his intentions. But like Moses understood while leading the Jews through the wilderness, being misunderstood is the price of leadership. The President must organise his troops and focus on the economic transformation he has promised. There is nowhere in the world where change is welcomed. The celebrated Korean leader... ; the founding father of the city state of Singapore, and even recent Chinese leaders including Chairman Mao tse Tong were all dictators loathed by their people and attacked by activists while there were laying the foundation for their countries to prosper. Today they are celebrated and revered by their compatriots.
As for the Minister of Petroleum, I have a feeling that the various Ad-hoc committees set up by her derive directly from the frustration and the subsidy removal fiasco and the confusion from the “double Wahala”. There are enough government agencies and departments to execute all the functions of those committees. It is way better to strengthen institutions, rather than building additional layers of red tape and possible corruption.