Mohammed Shosanya
The Centre for Anti-Corruption and Open Leadership (CACOL),has faulted removal of fuel subsidy by President Bola Tinubu,saying he should rather extend the subsidy to other products like foodstuff.
Debo Adeniran, CACOL’s Chairman, in a statement signed by its Director of Administration and Programmes, Tola Oresanwo, stated that the government should create food banks and produce marketing boards to receive all what farmers especially and other food producers harvested from their farms and buy at profitable rates and sell back to the masses at subsidies rates.
“He should also ensure that another way of compensating the poor for the crimes of the rich is to ensure that the public education system is completely free from the nursery level to first-degree level and other levels of education (from Masters’ to Ph.D. level) should be generally available to those who can afford it.
“We are particularly disappointed that Mr. President carried out his threat to remove fuel subsidy without adequate consultations with the various stakeholders and without considering the implications of the decision on the small-scale enterprises and majority of our people who have been impoverished by the mis-governance imposed upon them by successive governments in the past.
Adeniran added that CACOL believes that the middle class and those occupying the lower rung of the social strata, would be forced to face the general increase in the prices of fuel and other related products.
Other effects of the subsidy removal on the poor and the middle class, Adeniran stated, included a general increase in the cost of transportation, a general devaluation of the commanding power of wages as well a lowering of general living standards.
Adeniran added: “The decision will foist on the people multiple economic discomforts pitiably on the same people who are just coming out of the bad effects of crashing state revenues and variants of poverties of material well-being, the difficulties associated with the recent unavailability of petrol, the hard pains suffered from the lack of cash, resulting from the seemingly deliberate Emefiele driven fiscal policy and failed currency redesign.
“We will like to advise that Mr. President should not come in to cause agony and increase the level of misery of the people most of whom are already living below the poverty line and who are also looking up to him to proffer solutions to the myriads of problems facing the country.
“Moreover, the promise of ‘Renewed Hope’ would have been eroded if the President carries out his planned suspension of the fuel subsidy regime removal.
He implored the President to declare his assets because he has come to equity and he should be seen to have come with clean hands.
He said:“We want to know his assets and liabilities, and he should make it open to the generality of Nigerians. We are making this demand because we want him to run an open and participatory government and a government that is not shrouded in secrecy.
“He should also appoint people of competence and impeccable character so that there would be ‘right pegs in right holes’ so that at the end of the day, those of us who have reposed some level of confidence in him would know the indices and indicators we can use to appraise his government, whether to praise it or condemn it.
“That we seem to be supporting his ascendancy doesn’t mean that when things are commendable we will not commend it and when they are condemnable we will actually condemn whatever misstep we identified. We would also want him to implement his campaign promises to be SMART so that we may know the parameters to assess his performance in office. ”