Reference: Mr President, Wahala Dey! (1)

I do not need anyone to preach to me before understanding that we will never be able to develop our oil and gas sector without deregulating the downstream operations. But I am also aware that a government that has shown little or no commitment to the passage of the Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) which is targeted at a holistic reform of the industry is not pursuing deregulation; it is simply looking for more revenues because the books can no longer balance.
 

I, however, sympathise with President Goodluck Jonathan who has been under what I consider uncharitable attacks. We may query his choice of policy but to say he is pursuing deregulation because he “wants to punish Nigerians” is rather unfair. I met President Jonathan a few weeks ago when I went to present to him a copy of my book on the Yar’Adua years and I could not but notice the office has aged him considerably so I quite naturally feel for him at a period like this. He is not responsible for what Nigeria has become and yet he is faced with difficult choices on which he must take decision.
 

Unfortunately, the whole conversation has been muddled because people who ordinarily have always argued that there would be no investment in our oil and gas sector until there was an appropriate pricing at the pump, either for reason of politics or because of popular sentiment, are now almost criminalising those who genuinely believe in deregulation.
 

Notwithstanding, given what has transpired on the streets in the last four days something has to give. That is why I am of the opinion that the thinking in government circles that “when they are tired, they will go back to work” does not show an appreciation of the dynamics of the current national strike which is driven more by the people than by organised Labour.
 

Yet the examples of Tunisia and other Arab countries should teach that a leader, even a popularly elected one, could easily lose his authority outside the political process. Because of the manner in which this fuel subsidy matter has been handled, the president has lost so much valuable capital. Worse still, the issue has been so complicated that whatever option is chosen now the only real winner would not be the people but the same ‘cabal’ in the oil industry government blames for the problem. And the president will bear vicarious responsibility for that. The prices of almost all goods and services have gone up astronomically yet in Nigeria, Newton’s Law of Motion does not apply: when prices go up, they hardly ever come down!

Before going further, I believe President Jonathan should learn some useful lessons from Mr. Jimmy Carter, who remains till date one of the most decent men to have been President of the United States but whose stewardship is held in rather unflattering terms, even by those who idolise him. Yet things were going well for Carter until he lost it at the pump aside a series of other missteps. The enduring lesson though is that when a president is surrounded by book keepers who cannot appreciate the human dimension to economics, there is a problem.

William Greider in his book “Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country”, traced how Carter’s problem began with the Iranian revolution which pushed up the price of oil for which the then US president had no strategic response hence “he would remain in office, surrounded still by the aura of presidential authority, but he was no longer fully in control of his government.” 
 

With OPEC jerking up the oil price, Americans were feeling it at the pump and with that prices of other products went haywire. In trying to find a solution, Carter went to Camp David and kept himself incommunicado for ten days after which he addressed the nation. From here, let us take the story from Greider’s account:
 

“After two and a half years, Carter’s unusual mannerisms were familiar to the public, the rising and falling cadences that sounded like a protestant preacher, the cheerful smile that sometimes oddly punctuated stern passages. This speech was different, more somber in tone, more desperate in content. The president began with a startling ritual of confession—revealing excerpts of the private criticism he had collected at the Camp David meetings. “Mr President”, a southern governor had told him, “you are not leading this nation–you are just managing the government”. Others’ comments were equally critical. “You don’t see the people enough anymore.” “Don’t talk to us about politics or the mechanics of government, but about an understanding of our common good.” “Some of your Cabinet members don’t seem loyal. There is not enough discipline among your disciples.” 
 

The president was very candid about his own shortcomings as a political leader: “I have worked hard to put my campaign promises into law–and I have to admit, with just mixed success.”
 

The present crisis, however, was not really a matter of legislation, Carter declared. America is faced with a crisis of the soul, a testing of its moral and spiritual values. “The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways,” the president warned. “We can see the crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation.”
 

Spiritual distress was an abstraction, the source of America’s political discontent was actually quite tangible. It was the lines at gas stations that made people angry and gasoline at $1.25 a gallon. It was the constantly rising prices on supermarket shelves, prices that seemed to change every week and always higher…This second ‘oil shock’ as economists called it, automatically fed price increases into every product, every marketplace where Americans bought and sold. A president who urged the nation to sacrifice for long-range goals was addressing an audience pushed in the opposite direction–concentrating on today because it was unable to rely on tomorrow.”
 

With what is going on in Nigeria today, I can draw several parallels with Carter whose presidency was effectively terminated with just one question from Ronald Reagan at the presidential debate: ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago? 
 

1. President Jonathan is surrounded by people who confuse the means as the end. There are officials who say rather glibly that if he doesn’t back down and succeeds in the fuel subsidy battle, he has won, especially because other leaders before him could not do it. That is a rather naive way of looking at the issue. If at the end the current price regime stays (which is unlikely in the circumstance) then president Jonathan would be faced with the additional burden of unrealistic expectations with all the lofty promises tied to this fuel subsidy removal. Those who are exultant therefore do not understand that there is no medal for forcing an unpopular policy on the people.
 

2. Hon. Patrick Obahiagbon (the bombastic former House of Representatives member) said on Monday that he received no fewer than 15 calls from people very close to the president, telling him they should continue with the strike. While he might have exaggerated the number, I have also spoken with many people in government who have told me they never debated the issue of subsidy removal and that it is the agenda of some other colleagues so it is easy to understand why only few Ministers are talking, many simply don’t believe in it. 
 

3. The Governors started the campaign yet when it mattered most, none of them even bothered to convince the House of Representatives members from their states on the justification for it before they passed last Sunday’s motion which has damaged the capacity of the president on the issue.  
 

4. The cynical manner in which the policy was introduced does not allow for an easy exit strategy. Reverting to N65 per litre would be messy in that the marketers have already eaten their cake and you would simply be giving it back to them on a platter. On the pretext that they bought the fuel at the deregulated price (a lie!) they are going to create so much confusion that would serve as an incentive for another round of monumental corruption.
 

In the Lagos town-hall debate, there were two lines of argument from the government side neither of which rhymes with public mood. The first is that the regime of subsidy is fraud-ridden and that some marketers were getting paid huge sums of money for fuel never supplied. According to a blogger, “what is happening here is that the government has looked at the corruption it has enabled and has decided to raise the white flag in surrender. This is a strange way to do things given that these same corrupt people can’t be expected to become born again overnight once subsidies are removed. They will simply look for the new regime, whatever it is, and game that one too. Impunity emboldens corruption, always.”
 

The second argument is that subsidy benefits the elite and not the poor, a clear disconnect with the abject poverty in the land. There are people who travelled for Christmas and are till today stranded in their villages because they cannot raise the transport fares to return to their respective bases. What some officials fail to appreciate is that the rich may pay more for their cars but many can afford it and in a rent economy like ours, the state would vomit that too! But the poor have nowhere to turn.
 

I hope the president and his handlers can see very clearly that the crisis of our nation today goes beyond the fuel subsidy issue which is a mere catalyst. What we have is a convergence of ethno-religious crisis, security challenge, crisis of expectations based on promises made in the last elections, complete distrust of government and economic upheavals now accentuated by the fuel subsidy issue.
 

The preponderance of opinion today is that there is need for the president to retreat on the fuel subsidy policy so that there could be genuine negotiations with critical stakeholders. How he navigates this tricky issue should be of serious concern to people around him. If properly handled, the president can still bend on this issue without necessarily losing his height.

Source; ThisDay/Olusegun Adeniyi.