Now, It’s Our Turn To Cry
By Garba Deen Muhammad  (BarkByte, first published  October 23, 2011)

For the last few weeks there has been nothing in the media except the bluff and counter bluff between the federal government on one hand and the rest of us on the other, over the vexing issue of the removal of subsidy on petroleum.  At the moment Nigerians buy petrol at N65.00 per litre; if (or when) the subsidy is removed, Nigerians would start paying N180 (or thereabout) per litre. In plain English, this means that if a struggling bus driver buys 20 litres of petrol he pays N1, 300, while a benevolent federal government pays on his behalf an

additional N2, 300. By the time the government stops itself from “joining” in the payment, 20 litres of petrol would cost N3, 600. To stay in business, the bus driver will be forced to ask passengers to pay more for him to be able to transport them from one destination to the other. So would truckers and other haulage operators who move goods from one destination to the other. In this multiple way would the prices of cement, rice, garri, sugar, iron rods, hairdressing and everything that has any direct or indirect connection with petroleum or petroleum products, go up. With the increase in bus or taxi fare and in the prices of garri and rice, would come a rise in school fees because teachers will demand higher wages from school proprietors, who will in turn pass the increase to parents. 

In plainer English, life, currently tough and expensive, would become tougher and more expensive.  Unemployment and under-employment would rise; these would then give rise to likely increases in the rate of suicide and crime. You may want to stop here for breath of air. By the way it—air that is—would be the only

essential commodity that shall remain unaffected by the multiplier effect of an increase in the price of petrol, so you might as well enjoy it while you can because with the likely increase in the rate of suicide, you never can tell.

But the drama apart, it is honestly difficult to conjure up any sensible interpretation of what the government hopes to achieve with its latest antic. Here is a regime that came in with a huge moral deficit; one would have expected that the government’s immediate priority would be how to reposition itself in the perception of the people through populist policies and programs. For God’s sake even military regimes that shoot their way to power use palliative to settle down before baring their fangs. Instead the government’s first major policy design was like an insult to the collective sensibility of its citizens; even before he settles down, President Goodluck Jonathan had hastily and ill-advisedly announced a plan to submit a Bill to the National Assembly that

will give an elected president a single term of seven years as against the prevailing two terms renewable after every four years. The government’s second policy misdirection is the unresolved minimum wage fiasco. While agreeing to pay federal government workers a minimum wage of about N18, 000 per month on paper, in real terms most federal government workers are complaining that the increase in their monthly wages is so insignificant they wish they didn’t have it. The action of the federal government has also pitted workers at the state level against their state governments, with the federal government watching and exploiting the situation as it pleases.

And now with the cold blooded precision of a serial killer, insensitive to the delicate security situation it has been unable to improve, the federal government has dropped yet another source of anxiety for the citizens it has sworn to protect by way of its decision to remove fuel subsidy from its very fast-shrinking list of good deeds.

The decision was so unexpected, so badly timed in fact, that many Nigerians still think the whole clumsy political drama is no more than saber rattling by a government desperate for any kind of diversion from its ineptitude. Some diehard cynics actually believe that what the government is doing is no more than taking

a calculated risk; taking a chance on the temporariness of Nigerians’ staying power.  Those cynics believe that the federal government knows from experience that pretty soon the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) will run out of steam, and the half-hearted public commentators out of adjectives, hyperboles and flashy statistics. Then it will be time for proper negotiations whereby the people, subdued and defenseless, would have no recourse but to pleading and begging. At that point the federal government can decide to whisk off another 30 per cent

off subsidy and buy a section of the media to clap for it. Something similar had happened in the past, and there are more reasons now to believe it can happen again.

But whether the government is serious or just being characteristically flippant, the effect is the same: We are reaping the consequences of our actions—or inactions! At the end of his third ‘unsuccessful ‘ campaign to wrestle the presidency from the ruling PDP, former Head of State and presidential candidate of the opposition CPC, General Muhammadu Buhari gave in to his emotions and cried while giving what was his last speech as a contestant for the leadership

of Nigeria.

The public reaction to Buhari’s unexpected emotional display, particularly among his supporters, was mixed.  Some were dismayed, others disappointed; but the wise ones among us joined him by shedding their own tears.  Now the reasons why

Buhari might have cried are gradually emerging. For a man who withstood the deadly challenges of the warfront, and the even more difficult temptations of the flesh and of the soul, it was humbling—and illuminating—to watch Buhari finally succumbed to anything as soft and as tender as silent tears. With the

benefit of hindsight, Buhari was obviously crying both for the past (the serial injustices he and his supporters had suffered) as well as for the future (which is now our present); with all its attendant misery and danger now so poignantly manifest.

 But now it is our turn to cry. In a very tragically symbolic way, Buhari’s tears might have been the inanimate tears of Nigeria herself; because God knows if ever a nation had been abused by its nationals, it is Nigeria herself; and if ever a people had committed injustice against themselves, it is those people that have stood resolutely between a country and the kind of leadership it badly needed. Insecurity? Tenure elongation? Fuel subsidy? Bad governance? Ha! One day even having to worry about those would be a luxury…That is when the full impact of Buhari’s tears would hit home.