Atiku is playing a smart political game. He is tapping ruthlessly into rich veins of discontent across the country. Some say dangling a cocktail of shiny and impracticable promises to lure voters is worse than vote-buying. Others say Tinubu and the APC, who promised “Change” and then presided over corruption and cronyism, should get a taste of their own medicine: crude opportunism.
Atiku knows the national mood is raw. Poverty bites hardest in the North. Many people understand that a structural adjustment might yield lasting economic gain. But if Atiku can sell the idea that subsidy withdrawal was an elitist experiment that exposed the rural North to the worst shock, he may have crafted his best political message yet. If the narrative becomes that it impoverished the North more than the South, his job is effectively done.
The original sales pitch was simple. Subsidy was a national bellyache of wasted revenue. Removal was the bitter pill. The mouth is now bitter and the belly is in turmoil. The sweeteners that were supposed to ease the ordeal — cheaper transport, better schools, working clinics, a visible war on waste — have not arrived in the places that paid first. Peter Obi’s captured it : the people were asked to fast while the leaders feasted. Atiku’s idea sounds cynical but many think it’s better than the bitter pill by a bad doctor . End the therapy.
Tinubu was not elected only to stop paying for cheap petrol. He was supposed to take that money and make healthcare less hortible, public schools less embarrassing, farms more productive, and the young less eager to flee. Instead he boasts that this is the best time to be a governor, because federation allocations have swollen in a diluted naira. That is an accountant’s vacuous victory. A president who imposes hardship on the street and then fails to impose the same discipline on himself and his government will only foster hopelessness .
So Atiku’s subsidy bait could be swallowed by the hungry poor, hook, line and sinker.
Under a president who claims to have repaired the macroeconomic picture, insecurity has blossomed, poverty has multiplied, jobs have thinned, infrastructure has decayed and hope has dwindled. A few days ago, travellers through Benin spent four days on a bad road. Tinubu points instead to the Coastal Road he awarded to a business partner without due process and seeks credit, even immortality, for it. Critics point to such projects as evidence of corruption, prebendalism and self-aggrandisement rather than vision and judicious use of resources. The exchange rate has stabilised at a high level impoverishing everyone . Corruption has also stabilised at an even higher level corroding everything.
Because the government that imposed subsidy withdrawal has failed to use the extra resources prudently, failed to create an environment for productivity, and failed to offer a vision beyond revenue-gathering by squeezing the people, many now question the morality of the withdrawal. Many now believe the withdrawal only fattened the leaders. So Atiku’s dubious promise to restore subsidy could be received as the end of a painful treatment by a bad doctor.
Beyond sloganeering , the idea of restoration of subsidies will be a slippery policy path. Government revenues would shrink. With porous borders, the country would again resuming feasting the sub-region on cheap Nigerian fuel. Private investment in refining could be discouraged. Who knows whether multiple exchange rates would return as well? Restoring the old subsidy would also require twisting or amending the Petroleum Industry Act. The nation is already debt ridden. Would Atiku borrow to pay salaries ?
At 79, Atiku’s desperation is understandable. This is likely his last serious shot at the presidency. Against the charge of reckless opportunism, his supporters argue that fuel subsidy is the only tangible benefit the common man still extracts from a state run by kleptocrats. Therefore, whatever the inefficiency of the programme, it should be retained. Others say the punitive effect of withdrawal on the poorest is evidence that removal was callousness, not prudence. If Nigeria did not have porous borders and an unmanageable level of corruption, a limited return of subsidy might make a little economic sense even if it distorted the market.
Tinubu called it economic illiteracy. His aides said the Atiku’s idea would revive an opaque racket which corrupt customs officers would love. Atiku’s camp accused Tinubu of granting tax credits and concessions to oil majors and cronies while subjecting the masses to scorching austerity measures.
Atiku has struck a chord. The political harvest could be large. That is precisely why the economic cost must be spelt out in the same sentence. Tinubu’s failure to curb waste and corruption and manage savings cant be sufficient justification for falling back into a fuel subsidy is a trap. But perhaps it’s now time to a public debate on how best to deploy the subsidy funds.
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