Getting off the hooks for some of us in Nigeria is becoming very flinty and toilsome by the day as yet other strings and twines are trapping and impeding our movements due to the recent ‘political dandipratism’ of our leaders.
Last week, the FG at the 135th National Economic Summit in Abuja presided over by the Vice President, Kasim Shetima announced a release of about N180bn to the 36 states and the FCT to further cushion the effects of the removal of the fuel subsidy. A move some of us were not too happy with because it would further open several doors to corruptive tendencies and politicking in the polity.
The sum according to the Borno state Governor, Prof. Babagana Zulum can only procure about 100,000 bags of rice, 40,000 bags of maize and the rest to purchase fertilisers to the local farmers.
As at this morning, the Punch Newspaper in its report revealed that many states including Anambra, Ebonyi, Ekiti etc have not received the fund while some only claimed they got part of it. Kwara and Osun claimed only N2bn and 2 trucks load of rice. Though, Lagos, Ondo, Gombe and some others have received theirs from the FG, they are only working on the modalities for its distribution to the beneficiaries.
The question remains, how long would the FG continue to roll out these palliatives? Yes, they claimed it’s going to fix the immediate problems in many homes. For how long?
By simple calculation, in a state like Borno, the 100,000 bags of rice can only take care of 450,000 households in a day. The following day would be like ‘a-day-before’.
In Lagos, a state of about 26 million inhabitants, how can the palliatives be shared with more than 19 million people living below the poverty line. It shows that grains of rice would be shared among the residents and the poor instead of cups and ‘congos’.
Arguing it the more, the cause of the birth or emergence of the subsidy would have been looked into by trying to fix our troubled refineries and set new records in the economic sector. These could have been the best palliatives or ‘relief packages’ by the FG to millions of Nigeria in this hard moment.
Also, the prolonged imbroglio in the education and health sectors occasioning incessant strikes in these industries would have been visited and noticeable settlements in forms of labour agreements and concords could have been reached by now.
In the realm of common sense, a claim of saving about a trillion naira monthly after the removal would have summed up our reserves to a whopping balance of about N2.5 trillion since the beginning of the ‘no-subsidy era’ and the dawn of the new economic regime.
Aggrieved further, that the released fund was only given as a bailout because 48% of it is expected to be paid back to the CBN on an instalment loan model of 20 months while the rest 52% was for grants to each state.
Worsening enough, just two weeks ago, we woke up to the news that the dollar and naira market may likely suffer another step-back which would have a negative impact on the price of the PMS and it indeed happened.
A dollar went as much as N950 while the price of the PMS went as high as N610 and N620 per litre in some filling stations across the nation.
Another shocking note was released by the Nigerian Bakers Association announcing an upward review of the prices of bread with about 65% increment in some southwestern states.
I called a friend who owns a bakery to know why this is coming at this time. He responded that; “the fall of naira to a dollar and the cost of transportation have pushed us to this decision”.
This call seems important at this juncture. The FG should not trade with our lives any longer. Fixing of the economy and the education sector is just too imperative for us to survive.
IT IS NOW !!!
Dr. Abdulkareem Onakoya (PhD, FNIMC),Department of Political Science,Lagos State University of Education,Oto-Ijanikin (Epe Campus), Lagos, Nigeria, onakoyaa@lasued.edu.ng,Tel:- +2348026621805
