Is it possible that President Tinubu never read Daniel Yergin’s book on oil before aspiring to be president? Nobody makes that mistake because Yergin’s book, the first one at least, is still the most explosive on how understanding or misunderstanding of oil politics in domestic and global affairs, can make or mess up any president.
Time to get on with rapid damage control through an immediate reversal of the painful jab, Mr. President
Now, obviously without reading such a book in spite of his Texas’s cap, the president has wilfully invited so much hatred for his person and his government by the way he has handled the fuel subsidy policy. The fuel subsidy policy has come as a paradox. The point is that Nigerians have gone through so much stress arising from the extraordinarily radical contingency they have had to live with in terms of anxiety, worries and uncertainty associated with low quality governance in the past two decades. It had been expected that the 2023 transition just has to come with radical relief, irrespective of which of the APC, LP, NNPP or PDP won the presidential election. It is true that paradoxes rule the world but, even then, contending with a fuel subsidy regime of the type unleashed on May 29th, 2023 is too much of a paradox for the national audience in question.
Oil is still a historically unique commodity, with no equal in its multiple uses and, therefore, must be carefully handled. Oil is the number one item in national security management in every economy since it was discovered. No national military can do without it just as no national healthcare or educational system can survive without it. There is no economy without it, even as people talk no end about alternatives.
It is Intervention‘s belief that the president might have his own information and scenarios but making use of information and scenarios is a different politics. The way this thing has gone, it will be difficult to see an answer other than a total and immediate reversal of the withdrawal of oil subsidy in Nigeria through a presidential proclamation to that effect.
Sticking to the policy is handing regime opponents, enemies, critics and even admirers too strong a reason to confirm their doubts about the president’s cause. There has been no salary increase or a well organised welfare system ever in Nigerian history. And this is a vegetable, fish and tomato economy rather than a manufacturing economy. People will never be able to cope with a jump in oil price from less than two hundred to over six hundred Naira. No emergency salary increase will help people cope with the increase because the percentage of the salaried category is nothing to write home about. In any case, the salary that will enable people to cope with the jump is not likely to be what the Government will offer.
