An Open Letter to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan
from a group of Nigerian writers living in Austria
Dear Mr. President
We follow the developments in Nigeria regularly because, in addition to Nigeria
being our home, we also have a vested interest in the country and its progress.
Over the years, the lack of tangible progress in the country has not ceased to
appall. The Boko Haram terrors and the fuel subsidy imbroglio since the
beginning of the New Year are a case in point.
Four remarkable aspects of these crises are (1) the lack of decisive response by
you and your government to the consistent and blatant carnage unleashed by the
terrorist group Boko Haram on innocent, unsuspecting, and law-abiding
compatriots and foreigners alike; (2) the ill-considered, ill-advised, and
abundantly insensitive removal
on January 1, 2012 of the fuel subsidy that more than doubled the pump price of
gasoline from N65 to N141 per litre overnight; (3) the unilateral partial
reversal on 16 January 2012 of the price of gasoline to N97 per litre; and (4)
the deployment of armed troops and tanks on the streets to forestall
peaceful and popular protests.
Mr. President, your decision to remove the fuel subsidy, the abrupt manner by
which you removed it, the lack of adequate preparations for the removal, and the
magnitude of the impact of the removal all amounted to adding insult to injury;
the injury being that Nigerians were/are already suffering inestimable hardship,
living for the most part on less than an already miserable $2 a day! And now,
your most recent actions -- the unilateral, partial reversal of the fuel price
policy and the deployment of armed troops and tanks to intimidate your peaceful
compatriots -- make it all look as if removing the subsidy in the first place
was, for you, an end in itself rather than a means to a more equitable and
sustainable growth. Growth will be difficult to sustain with the level of
inflation and hardship the subsidy removal has caused, not even after the
partial reinstatement of the subsidy.
Development, Mr. President, requires the transformation of society. With its
perennial lack of any meaningful web of useful infrastructures, with its endemic
corruption, with its unenviable state of gross insecurity accentuated by Boko
Haram, Nigeria is not yet a transformed society by any measure.
Experience all over the world, especially in developing countries of Africa, has
shown repeatedly that one should not privatize quickly because the privatization
process itself invariably creates a vested interest -- with the potential to
monopolize the market with the accrued financial windfall. So does abrupt,
unsequenced deregulation… especially in untransformed societies. Just as the
monopolies spawned by instant privatization undermine competition, the political
process, and the original objectives, deregulation-generated monopolies also
precipitate similar outcomes. It seems to us that if Nigeria must deregulate it
should do so in sequences. A country like Nigeria should not deregulate too
quickly unless it can guarantee that
powerful vested interests cannot immediately entrench themselves thereby.
Your first address to the nation on the present crisis did not convey such a
guarantee. Earmarking a colossal amount of money to combat the side effects of
the removal of fuel subsidy does not necessarily provide such a guarantee. Your
second address on 16 January 2012 to the nation on the crisis did not convey
such a guarantee either. The governance practices of past administrations in
Nigeria have not suggested the possibility of such a guarantee.
If the prevailing climate of insecurity in the country contributes to making
such a guarantee less possible, then you certainly need to work harder on your
security policy. As “rent-seeking” is profitable under conditions of insecurity,
the corrupt are likely to continue with business-as-usual. Meanwhile and
judging from experience, whatever windfall might accrue from removing the
subsidy -- partially or totally -- is unlikely to be better appropriated.
There is an unspoken assumption underlying your policy of fuel subsidy removal.
This assumption, deriving from economic theory, is that markets will quickly
spring up to meet the needs -- such as providing insurance against the attendant
risks, of which there are quite a few -- created by the sudden hike in fuel and
commodity prices. We know that Nigeria does not have a social security system or
an unemployment insurance scheme. We also know that Nigeria’s private sector,
which is not providing these services, is not about to begin to provide them in
a country that is yet untransformed. So, the social cost of the fuel subsidy
removal in terms of urban and civil unrest, industrial action, unemployment,
increased financial burden on those who are lucky to remain employed, increased
remittances from the diaspora, anxiety, loss of buying power, reduced
consumption and production, etc., is quite considerable and will endure for
long.
It is for these reasons that we consider the four policies (or lack thereof)
mentioned above as failures. Listening and reading through opinions on both
sides of the divide, one cannot but come away with the impression that
Nigerians, by and large, are not necessarily against the subsidy removal, but
that what they needed was a more pragmatic and a more sensitive approach to the
removal. Mr. President, Nigerians are not mere statistics; we are, 150 million
of us, people, vulnerable people of flesh and blood.
The failure of your administration to reckon with and anticipate the protests
and outbursts your subsidy policy precipitated speaks volumes. There is no
question that your partial revision of the subsidy policy was a result of the
protests and outbursts of Nigerians. While revising the policy partially might
have been welcome, doing so unilaterally on your own terms was certainly not.
What is completely unacceptable is your latest handling of the situation: the
deployment of armed soldiers and tanks in the streets to intimidate peaceful,
nonviolent demonstrators exercising nothing other than their fundamental rights
of expression.
There is something utterly repugnant in the sense of proportion and purpose
implied by the lack, on the one hand, of a
decisive response
to the
continued
carnage unleashed on Nigerian society by the
fully armed Boko Haram terrorists, and your decisive, quick deployment, on the
other hand, of armed soldiers and tanks in the streets to contain unarmed
civilian compatriots peacefully expressing their legitimate rights to disagree.
As concerned Nigerians abroad, we humbly urge your Excellency to seriously
rethink, and seriously consider embarking on the following four measures:
1.
The immediate removal of the soldiers and their military equipment from the
midst of civil society;
2.
Continued dialogue with the unions until both sides arrive at a mutually
acceptable compromise;
3.
Outlining a program for a phased implementation of the subsidy removal policy;
and
4.
Taking decisive steps to stem the prevailing security threats in the country,
and prevent their reoccurrence in the future.
Chibo Onyeji
Babátólá Alóba
Obiora C-IK Ofoedu
Sarah Udoh-Grossfurthner
Smart Eze