By Friday Ewah, Esq
“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” The foremost writer Chinua Achebe uses this opening stanza of William Butler Yeats’ poem to buttress the unpalatable situation in his country home then.
But, today Nigeria is not far from what Achebe sees some beautiful decades ago. A nation blessed with abundant natural and mineral resources. A country that naturally should have enough for her citizens and even the entire West Africa, but unfortunately at the present moment we lack even to feed ourselves, a population of just two hundred million persons.
However, a leader must be very dynamic to lead effectively. Granted without conceding, subsidy removal is a novel strategy to set Nigeria on the part of greatness, but when the music changes, a dynamic leader ordinarily should pause and employ some measures to cushion effects of the policy or suspend the policy if it turns out to be an anti people.
Governance has grown passed being obstinate or staking resolutely to a policy or strategy simply because you believe it is a solution to a problem(s), when it’s practically not.
This fuel subsidy removal policy is structured so that it is enriching only those in government. How on earth would the level of hunger be this high in a country that is supposedly the giant of Africa, if not that “the hands are of Esau while the voice is of Jacob”.
Well, suffice it to say that state governors, Ministers as well as other appointees of government in both states and federal are unjustly smiling to their offices with fat allocations with nothing absolutely commensurate to the masses who gave them the mandate to where they are today.
It is pertinent to note that governance ought to be for the benefit of the people (citizens). Notwithstanding, subsidy is a policy employed usually by any responsible and responsive government to carter for her citizens, but as that what we are seeing in Nigeria?
Even in big capitalist economies, most items that would ordinarily occasion hardship to the citizens are subsidized. Nigeria as a third world country ordinarily has no business taking off subsidy albeit in an essential commodity like PMS.
Someone should please tell President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reconsider his stand on subsidy removal now that the hunger in the land still understands English.
