Living In Post-Subsidy Nigeria

 By Adekunle Adekoya

We were warned that petrol subsidy would not last forever and would have to go someday. It has now gone. President Bola Tinubu chose to extinguish subsidy in his inaugural address on May 29. As we all came to see, the president had barely left the Eagle Square venue of his inauguration when the petrol market responded. That May 29 afternoon, most petrol stations had shut their gates to motorists. Those that did not shut their gates had queues several hundred metres long, and dispensed from only one pump. That development generated instant chaos at the stations. But that was just the beginning.

By the following day, a pricing template indicating how much a litre of petrol could be sold for in each state of the federation emerged in the social media. It turned out to be real as the oil sector regulators confirmed its reality. It became clear the one litre of petrol sold for N488 in Lagos, which was the lowest price nationwide, while the price of N537 was indicated for Borno and Yobe states.

The effect on life and living took instant effect, like the venom of a poisonous snake like the cobra. Transport fares doubled or tripled all over and it became clear that N100 could no longer take anybody anywhere. Even Okada riders started charging N200. No more N50 bus or Okada rides. That sent me into deep nostalgia about when life and living in Nigeria was pure bliss.

I remembered, and wondered what happened to the Nigeria in which, as a secondary school leaver, I got a job as auxiliary teacher in a secondary school and was paid N96 as monthly salary. It was not even up to N100. My father of blessed memory made me save N70 from that N96 every month. I lived on the remaining N26 till the next payday. Whatever happened to that Nigeria, where N100 which used to be a princely sum in terms of the value it can deliver, can no longer buy biscuit or sweets for a crying toddler?

As the month of June trudged on, Nigerians settled to accept the harsh reality that a very hard grind is ahead in terms of life and living. How can an average motorist living in Lagos with its endless and interminable traffic jams cope with the expenditure of about N200,000 per month on petrol alone? Given that ours is a generator economy with unreliable public power supply, how much more will an individual need to spend on petrol alone, going forward? I simply shudder at the issues my fellow compatriots will have to contend with as we move on. It is clear that the savings base of many of us will be eroded.

Not surprisingly, prices of food items have taken their cue from the new price of petrol, and have taken off for outer space. I pity myself and millions of others who have to put food on the table for madam and the children. These days, every N10,000 withdrawal seems to vanish, even before leaving the ATM machine or POS operator. Yet, there seems no respite in sight.

The palliatives for which the outgone Buhari government obtained a World Bank loan of $800 million, in my book, will not help the ordinary man in a country where the elite have always hijacked subsidies meant for the poor. Besides, what the past administration was looking at included provision of buses to ease things in the road transport sector, which I believe will be money down the sewer. 

Can the road transport operators ever account for the thousands of buses they got under the defunct Federal Urban Mass Transit Programme? How about buses made available to the labour movement? Government will merely be enriching and creating a new class of motor park kingpins. Not the way to go.'

So far, the response of the labour movement to the issue of subsidy removal have been pedestrian and indicates lack of rigour in engaging issues bothering Nigerians. How can anybody be asking for salary increase as a response to subsidy removal? That’s pedestrian if you consider the ripple effects. As things stand, not all states of the federation are paying the N30,000 minimum wage.

If the Federal Government can pay its workers, would all the states be able to pay? And the private sector? Most companies would have to dip into their strategic reserves to accommodate another round of salary increase. Pensioners will equally demand a rise in their emoluments too. We’d be dealing with a cascade of demands that the economy, running at present levels, cannot absorb. 

It is better to look in a direction where the earnings of most ordinary Nigerians can deliver greater value than is presently possible. That would be the way to go and requires proper and productive use of our thinking caps when we put them on. 

All in all, we’ll all be managing the harder grind as we move on. By the end of this year, ordinary workers would have become managers while managers would have become directors.

*Adekoya is a commentator on public issues