Fuel subsidy and Nigerian workers

Over the years, the Nigerian government had continued to express its desire to remove the petroleum subsidy which it felt was no longer easy to maintain in the face of the country’s fast dwindling economy. But there hadn’t been a simple solution. If government removed the subsidy, many Nigerians would be agitated with government because they would feel shortchanged both as ordinary citizens and as dodgy petroleum dealers. If government kept the subsidy, government would find it difficult to maintain the deal at a time its economy had come to an all time low principally due to fluctuating oil prices.

That was why an attempt by former President Goodluck Jonathan to remove the subsidy in 2012 was greeted with stiff resistance from civil society organizations that coordinated a protest which nearly brought the government down on its knees. Another attempt by former President Buhari to remove the subsidy in 2022 was vehemently opposed, this time, by the generality of the Nigerian people. And so, everyone hung in there.

After Asiwaju Bola Tinubu of the All Progressives’ Congress (APC) was sworn into office as the 16th President and Commander-in-Chief of the Nigeria Armed Forces on 29 May 2023, one of the first things he told Nigerians was that the days of fuel subsidy were over. Many Nigerians were perplexed. And as would be expected, there were several shades of opinions in favour of, and against, the removal of the subsidy. To many Nigerians, the biggest problem about fuel subsidy was that the way it was calculated had never been transparent. Since its calculation was not transparent, nobody knew the exact amount of revenue involved in the subsidy regime. Nigerians only accepted how much they were told funded the subsidy, but the template was never made available in a way that a third party could verify its authenticity. And to that extent, many Nigerians believed that there was need to remove the subsidy because it only served as a huge conduit pipe to secretly drain the Nigerian economy.

Considering all the socioeconomic problems Tinubu is going to inherit from his predecessor on the other hand, many Nigerians are minded to think that removal of the subsidy would only add to their sufferings. And of course the labour movements across the country have been quick to summon their members for a show down with the new Tinubu government. They have scheduled a protest for Wednesday, 7 June 2023. President Tinubu has called for a truce in the face of rebellion from the northern and western branches of the trade unions which think that the executives of their union are being partisan and are advocating for a protest in order to discredit the new government and support the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi.

Peter Obi and the Labour Congress

The first thing we need to understand here, however, is that even Peter Obi himself is in favour of the removal of fuel subsidy. He has already said that he would remove fuel subsidy if he becomes President. The second, and perhaps more important, thing we need to appreciate is that Labour party in any country that has one, is the party of the working class families of that country.

What was prevalent in the past was that often in many countries, big business moguls and media entrepreneurs, money bags and wealthy and powerful families would dominate the party politics of the country as has been the case with Nigeria and many other African and European countries over the years. This they do successfully with the tacit backing of the military and police forces they secretly fund. Examples are Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Maummar Gaddafi of Libya, Ali Sale of Yemen, Bashir Asad of Syria and back in Nigeria, all of them who own oil fields and are privately mining the country’s oil wells, excluding the majority of Nigerians from belonging to their commonwealth.

These families have extensive control of the country’s economy – from banking, telecommunications, import and export, agriculture and food distribution to petroleum, tourism and real estate. When the wealthy families are in government, they exhibit certain traits that easily show them for who they are.

Their principal ambition, which runs diametrically opposite the mission and vision of any Labour Party, is to destroy the middle class and set up a two-class society of extremely rich families and extremely poor families. They nurture impunity in the process and endorse the suppression of the poor who have no one to speak for them. And naturally, young people who come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are mainly uneducated are lured into all sorts of crimes, making the society unsafe. Then these wealthy families go further to deplete the police force and sometimes the military who they hire to protect them as security outfits and are paid heavily, thus compromising the security architecture of the country in their selfish service.

It is complimentary that Tinubu’s young administration understood the need to free the police force from serving this group Nigerians identify as the “very important personalities” (VIPs) in order to have enough manpower to patrol the streets and roads and maintain a highly visible presence in the villages, towns and cities of the country in an attempt to reduce crime.

These wealthy politicians would normally share the national wealth among members of their class. You see them driving private jets, dishing out millions for charity, owning hundreds of houses in Nigeria, Dubai, London, France and America. A good example is how they have shared out the oil wells in the country among themselves. They have also given permission for more private universities than public universities to be built in the country.

Government by this group of wealthy people in politics doesn’t pay workers in time. They owe arrears of salaries running into several months to workers at all levels, including teachers, lecturers, civil servants, doctors and nurses. In such a way, they also encourage child labour, so that you see Nigerian children as young as 10 years hawking commodities like puff-puff, pure water, soft drinks, fried plantains and stuff like that in motor parks and along highways when they should be in school. The laws created for working class families are different from the ones created for the families of those politicians in government. In a government of this nature, the working class families have no voices as they were likely to get fired from their jobs if they raised their voices.

And so, at some point, working class families decided to go into politics directly as in the case of Nigeria, to fortify the middle class, bridge the gaping gap between the extremely rich and extremely poor families and thereby minimize the myriads of crimes that would have arisen if the society was built on a two-class social “arrangement” of extremely rich families and extremely poor families. And that is how the Labour Party evolved in many countries that have it. The Labour Party took the interest of every working class family into consideration if it was in government. It was a revolution against the benign dictatorship of governments by the rich and influential families who cared mainly for their class. The Labour Party knew that that if it was government, the future of the working class people would be in their own hands to make.

So, if labour movements in Nigeria are planning for a protest, they need to first consult with and get advice from Peter Obi, their presidential candidate, their main political face. If the unions actually own the party as they should, going by the name, there should be no reason to tribalize their vision. There should be no reason for the Western and Northern branches to talk differently from the Executives. Workers are workers everywhere. And their mandate should be to protect workers at every level in the country, whether they are farmers or herders or civil servants or doctors or teachers. So, the trade unions need to put their house in order and consult with Peter Obi if they won’t truncate their chances of leading Nigerian working class families as the organizational wing of their political party.

The fact the Labour Union should be considering at this time is that if Nigerians are told to pay N500 per litre of petrol, they should compare themselves with their neighbours. In Ghana a litre of petrol costs 13.207 Ghana cedis which is the equivalent of N545.14k. In Cote de Ivore it is 815 XOF which is the equivalent of N615.72. In Kenya it is 184.560 Kenyan Shillings which is N620.10. In Uganda, it is 4999 Ugandan Shillings which is N615.26. In South Africa, it is 22.980 ZAR, the equivalent of N544.20. In the UK it is £1.44 which is N828.31 (Bank Rate) and N1, 339.2 (Dark Market) and in the USA, a litre of petrol costs $4.30 which is the equivalent of N1, 984.11.

If all these countries are not complaining, Nigerians should stop mourning and look out for where the money would be invested – in education and health care. Nigerian hospitals need to be upgraded, modern facilities installed, working conditions for workers upgraded to keep workers happy to stay. Schools and public universities should be upgraded, modern books put in the libraries, laboratories equipped with modern facilities and so on. The minimum wage has to be upgraded in the face of economic realities. The need for steady electricity and safe drinking water can also not be underestimated.

There is a dire need for the trade unions to understand what they are into as a political party. If they succeed in overthrowing the wealthy families and become the government of the people, it is expected that they will institute laws that would make it a criminal offence for employers of labour to owe workers salary arrears at all levels. It is expected that they will enact laws that would make child labour a criminal offence. There are such laws now but they are rarely enforced. A Labour government will be expected to enforce the laws. It will be expected to make education in every state free and compulsory at least to middle secondary school, in the knowledge that education is the right of every Nigerian child. The labour movements must make sure what they want to do tallies with the aspirations of their political leadership. That is very important.

Asinugo is a London-based British-Nigerian journalist, author and publisher of ROLU magazine (Website – https://rolultd.com)