SUBSIDY WAHALA: Now that Jonathan has subsided crises in Nigeria – Uche Onwuchekwa

In their ill-fated town hall meeting moderated by the Chief Executive officer of This Day Newspapers, one could see glaringly that, that outing was nothing short of a smokescreen. It was a conspiracy of the Federal Government with its accomplices against the rest of us.

President Goodluck Jonathan has at no time pretended to be the leader we sought after. No. He was foisted on us by his godfather, the erstwhile President, general Obasanjo. For me, it was not a surprise at all. It is even more undignifying for a President to begin to play hide and sick in a matter that is of National import. It is rather a shame. We were meant to understand that the subsidy removal was to take effect in April just for us to get Jonathan’s baptism of inhumanity in the wake of New Year. What a great gift. I have already known him as elite of fox. Thus his action has proven this beyond reasonable doubt.

A credible and transparent Government would have, as a matter of respect for her citizenry, been truthful and sincere by putting the facts on the table. If the analyses culled from an analyses on the total cost of producing one litre of feul at about N40 is anything to go by, it simply means that Dr. Jonathan has concluded arrangements to sell Nigeria to the highest bidder if he is not the highest bidder we are talking about here. If the allegation that filtered into the air sometime ago on contract to importing kerosene to Jonathan’s junior wife is also a fact, it then means that we are dealing with an enemy President here.

Tam David-West, the former Petroleum Minster has always described the so called subsidy as fraudulent and non existent, one wonders what the drive is to cause untold hardship to the Nigerians by President Jonathan and his Westernised Finance Ministers. I listened to Dezianne Alison Madueke, she said in the next twelve calendre months, Nigeria’s refineries would have become Ninety percent functional. I was expecting to hear from her that the pump price by then would be returned to its normal price since it is still gainful even to the government. Nobody seems to be talking about that because all their kiths and kins are into importation of petroleum products.

While we are all for the development of Nigeria, it is also so important that we adopt an economic blueprint that is home grown as development is not uni-lineal as our Bretton Woods Financial Advisers would have us believe. Exporting finished petroleum products outside the shores of Nigeria is not an end in itself. For palliatives planned by the Federal Government, it is rather comical that they are coming at a time the Federal Government had already imposed a rib-crushing tax on petroleum products. It is better seen as tax because at no time was there any subsidy. These so called palliatives for which one of them is importing one thousand and five hundred diesel engine buses, on the face value appears attractive but how many of the light weight commercial transporters do the Federal Government want to drive away from the business.

It was rather a fraud if they fixers of these prices are not transparent and sincere enough to tell us the economics behind price fixing. The licenses issued to Private investors to establish refineries, our economy handlers could not explain what stifled the interest and why nobody is talking about it.

Lacking in the requisite dexterity to tackle her attendant security problems, the Federal Government interestingly decided to work by the way of reverse. President Jonathan decided to further curse Nigerians with a deadlier scourge of Security problems by fueling and subsidizing security in already submerged Nigeria in the ocean of insecurity. One just wonders the environmental sensing ability of our Mr. President and his economic development and security team from hell. These are so disarticulated and scattered policy thrust of uncoordinated team. Even with the State of Emergency in some part of the North, the carnage is still far from over while we are breeding other rebels by being insensitive and unconcerned by the suffering of the people. Today, we now have most of the Security agencies that are even in short supply to contain millions of Nigerians that will overwhelm them thereby eliciting use of weapons to maim and kill our people. It is wholly ignoble.

Plagiarism is what we get. One may say, have I got the skill to drive the Nigerian economy? Some of the fundamentals of economics are checked by proviso of ceteris paribus. When all things are not held to constant then what do you do? You want to force a bitter pill down the people’s throat. I smell a rat. Are we paying back the so called debt forgiveness secured by Obansanjo and Okonjo Iweala? Let them tell us the truth. It may have just been a voodoo forgiveness and possibly a conspiracy theory. Why must we use this western model? My conjecture is that there is something Uncle Jonathan is not telling us. I thought, by his education attainment, he should be thought enough to think through a proposal?

Not rapt about the predictions made years ago by the US intelligence that Nigeria would break, today such is happening right under the nose of president Jonathan through the activities of Boko Haram and of course through the agents of disintegration found in the economic team assembled by Mr. President. People of the Southern region of Nigeria have been given an ultimatum to leave the North. This is real. Last Christmas gift of bomb and blood does not mean anything to Uncle Jonathan. The continual annihilation and ethnic cleansing going on in Plateau State does not mean anything to our pseudo-leaders. And this has been on for a while now despite all efforts by the Nigerian State.

Submitted by:

Uche Onwuchekwa