Former Senate President, Dr. Iyorchia Ayu, an outspoken political figure, who has spearheaded many? battles and tasted the bitter pills of high-wired Nigerian politics, is miffed by last Sunday’s removal of fuel subsidy by President Goodluck Jonathan. He tells Deputy Editor, SONI DANIEL and Group Political Editor, FRANCIS AGBO, in this interview, that the action of the President amounts to a declaration of war on Nigerians and that by so doing, the administration is toying with a time bomb that may explode in its? face. Read on:
How do you feel about last Sunday’s removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government?
I wasn’t shocked, but was extremely disappointed that a government that was elected barely seven months ago to alleviate the suffering of Nigerians chose the unpatriotic route of visiting hardship on Nigerian people who are already suffering. It is a government that is unpatriotic that has no interest of the ordinary Nigerians at heart; it is a government that is taking dictation from outside, specifically from the IMF and the World Bank and whose instructions are being executed by their representative, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who a few years ago, was posted here by them to do their own bidding. During her first outing as finance minister, she took $12 billion of our scarce resources and handed over to them in the name of paying debts. That amount was enough to build new refineries so that the need for importation of fuel would not have arisen in the first place.
So I was extremely disappointed with the government that is giving us a lot of IMF/World Bank propaganda because when they say ‘removal of subsidy’, first of all, they are supposed to tell us the unit cost of production; that is, how much it actually costs to produce a litre of fuel from upstream to downstream before you begin to tell us how much it is subsidized. Nobody has ever told us that. Secondly, we are told that a small cabal is? benefiting from the subsidy. If they exist, Nigerians would like to know who they are and why they are feeding on the rest of us and what has been done to punish them. It is the responsibility of government to stop this small cabal because they know them, they deal with them and they have not made any effort to stop them from benefiting at our expense.
Even the massive 100 percent increase which they have now visited on us is still going to go back to benefit the same small cabal which includes people in government. So this government as I have said before is not a government that has the interest of Nigerians at heart; it is an IMF/World Bank- sponsored government, carrying all massive propaganda, deceiving us and implementing a specific agenda which they have done in many other 3rd world countries.
Today Jonathan is not the one running Nigeria; the country is being run by Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the prime minister who is designated coordinating minister, who is bringing these policies straight from the West as they have done in other countries and caused massive problems. So I don’t think Jonathan really understands what is going on. Unfortunately, when the crisis comes down, they will all run away and leave him to take the heat. So, I feel sorry for Jonathan because he doesn’t seem to understand what is going on and it is something that has been repeated in many developing countries.
But Mr. President recently described the cabal as genuine businessmen like other Nigerian businessmen.
Then why call them a cabal? A cabal is a group of people who secretly organise their interest to benefit only themselves. So how could you turn around to say they are genuine, doing genuine business and because of them the rest of us are suffering. If they are a cabal, you should try to smash that cabal and allow the benefits of oil sales to come directly to Nigerians. Now let me explain to fellow Nigerians through you gentlemen of the press. Every country subsidises something. The United States subsidises agriculture to almost a ridiculous level because if you remove that subsidy in the United States, nobody will vote you into government again. The United States subsidises many other products and every other country.
So in Nigeria, we have some comparative advantage in terms of oil wealth, which God has given us. In other words, if we manage it very well we should be able to subsidise oil and oil products in such a way that the ordinary Nigerian would be comfortable. So it is the ignorance, the mismanagement and the fact that a government that is elected by the Nigerian people allows a cabal to benefit at the expense of Nigerians making it possible for us to suffer and the cabal to wallow in massive wealth at the expense of the ordinary Nigerian.
But the government insists that without removing subsidy the economy would crash.
Well, now that they have removed the so called subsidy or let me say now that they have simply increased the prices of petroleum products by 100 percent, let us see how it is going to help the economy and the wellbeing of Nigerians. Today transport from one point A to B has gone up by over 200 percent, the cost of bringing food to urban centres would increase by 200 percent, food prices would increase by over 200 percent, imported products would increase by over 200 percent while inflation would follow same .How are you going to sustain an economy that is already comatose.
Mr. President has set up a board headed by Christopher Kolade to reinvest the proceeds to be derived from subsidy removal. Is that not an indication of seriousness on the part of the government?
I wish Christopher Kolade goodluck. I am afraid certain great Nigerians who made their names keep making themselves available for such names to be dented. There is nothing the Kolade board can do. At the end of the day he would see that not much has been achieved. I don’t believe the government is on the right track and Nigerians are very justified to protest against this massive increase in fuel prices. There is no place in the world that a government increase prices of a central commodity like fuel by 100 percent and the population would accept it. Marginal increases of 25, 30,40 percent usually generate a lot of agitation by the ordinary population.
It is only in Nigeria that a government that is not even up to a year in office and has not done anything to cushion the problems of the ordinary Nigerian people can visit such a massive increase on the people and expect the Nigerian people to take it and say nothing. I wish Christopher Kolade goodluck.
What is the way out?
I wish I knew but I don’t know the way out as of today because the way out would be to elect a patriotic government that will study the situation and take patriotic decisions in terms of economic investments. We have a couple of refineries that are old.
During Obasanjo’s? administration, which I was a part of, from time to time even though I had nothing to do with the oil sector, we kept hearing of turnaround maintenance of the refineries- some powerful persons were given huge sums of money to do turn around maintenance of the refineries . No single refinery has been turned around till date. One would want to know what happened to that money.
So the basic thing has not been done; we have no refineries in this country yet so much money was pumped by the Obasanjo administration to specific contractors for turnaround maintenance. We should ask Obasanjo who are the people who got this money. What happened to the turnaround maintenance that no refinery is producing at even 50 percent capacity, that we are faced with this terrible problem of a small group of people benefitting enormously by importing refined products into the country.
What do you think government should do to contain Boko Haram?
I think Boko Haram is just an aspect of the wider security problems we have in this country. A few years ago it was the Niger Delta militants and other uprisings here and there, but you see, the Boko Haram phenomena, which is part of the global terrorist phenomena happening particularly in the middle east; Afghanistan, Iraq and other places is a phenomenon that is germinating on the poor economic situation in the country because when it started it was a small phenomenon and I believe that if it had been handled properly we could have nipped it in the bud.
The first mistake was to send the police who arrested the leadership of that organization and instead of bringing him alive so that we would know more about the structure, the mode of operations and the source of funding of the organization, they killed him in cold blood. So the first mistake that was made was from the security services. The second mistake was for government to imagine that they could simply solve the problem (because it is like fighting a guerilla war) by sending police officers and soldiers there to kill members of Boko Haram. How do you kill members of an organization you don’t know who are the members, and you sent soldiers whose training is to kill.?
You will recall that at once time in Borno police were killing innocent people; so when you go kill members of a community who are not involved, nobody will cooperate with you. In other words, you are creating more enemies. Those people who are giving you information would be afraid of you, some of them would run away and because you have killed somebody’s brother. He is more amenable to recruitment by that organization. So what started as a small phenomena that would have been studied first with the arrest of the Boko Haram leader, because by then the members were known but we allowed them to disperse by killing a few of them that were arrested.
Having said that, those who are involved in the Boko Haram thing or using the name of Boko Haram by bombing or targeting churches across the country, are igniting a problem for this country; a problem that cannot be solved in the future. No country fights a religious war and survives it and in a country like Nigeria where our settlement pattern in terms of religion, nationality is so complicated, you can’t draw a clear line. In some families, you have Muslims and Christians.
So, to begin to target churches is a disaster and I strongly condemn that as a Nigerian, not because I am a Christian but as a patriotic Nigerian. Bombing of churches will ultimately precipitate a crisis with religious sentiments. I don’t want Nigeria to be like Lebanon, or Ireland or like the Pakistan / Israeli complex situations. When you get a country into religious war, it can go on for centuries; it will lead to the disintegration of? this country and I appeal if they have any conscience at all, please those behind this issue of Boko Haram must stop targeting churches or bringing us to issues of religion. If they have a problem with the government they should try and settle with the government and stop attacking churches and innocent persons.
So many people are saying that the removal of oil subsidy may heighten insecurity and even create more social problems in the country.
Yes it is certainly going to heighten insecurity in the country in a way that was not imagined. The removal of subsidy is definitely going to create more problems and poverty in the land. This government is actually toying with a time bomb that may explode in their face. By increasing fuel prices you are visiting hardship on ordinary Nigerians including the security agencies who also buy from the same market with the ordinary Nigerians.
A security man who is unable to meet his daily needs will not give the best to the country. In fact the government is undermining its own security by increasing fuel prices. The next issue is whether the government has the right to unilaterally raise oil prices without getting the approval of the National Assembly.