By Sunny Awhefeada
Delta State born gospel singer, Harold Ikuku, released a popular album that was the rave of the moment in the tough and horrible years that the 1990s were. The song’s motif is “I shall not die”. Although a gospel song, it resonated with both Christians and non-Christians as a result of its affirmative message of survival in the face of brutal economic and psychological assault on the citizenry.
It was this song that a man sang with so much gusto on hearing of the new pump price of petrol about three weeks ago, the second of such astronomical increase within two months of the present regime. When President Bola Tinubu said, in his inaugural speech, that petroleum subsidy was gone, his handlers must have thought that it was a masterstroke in view of the fact that petrol subsidy had become an albatross for the Nigerian polity.
