By Bolaji Tunji
I picked the title of today’s piece from the statement of the
Minister of Information, Alhaji Lai Mohammed while briefing journalists on
Wednesday shortly after the Federal Executive Council meeting. According to him,
the country is so broke that they had to increase the petroleum pump price
inorder to generate money to run the system.
It is not as if the
APC spokesman’s statement comes as a suprise, what’s suprising about his
statement is the fact that he had not again laid the blame for this parlous
state of affairs by the doorsteps of the immediate past administration of
Goodluck Jonathan as usual. Unfortunately, I disagree with the minister.
I disagree because I know that Nigeria
But before going into
my take on why this country is not broke, there’s an aspect of the minister’s
statement that bothers me. Alhaji Mohammed had said that because of poor
earning, the government had to look inward to generate money, he said it was on
this basis that the pump price of fuel was increased to N145 per litre from its
original cost of N86.50.
My problem with the
statement is that in order to generate more money to run the affairs of
government, the burden had to be put round the neck of the poor masses who are
already groaning. Just a few weeks back, the same poor masses had to pay more
for darkness ( electricity is now a mirage) when electricity tariff was
increased. The masses is being made to take on more burdens, more sacrifices.
The questions are;
what are the sacrifices being made by our rulers? Have they cut down on their
own material comfort? Was it not a few days ago that the Senate bought some
exotic SUV for its members. In spite of the uproar on why the upper chambers
had to buy foreign made vehicles instead of patronizing Innoson that
produces made in Nigeria
