No Honeymoon for President ‘BAT’

By Kazeem Akintunde

Ordinarily, Bola Ahmed Tinubu should enjoy the first few months in office as his ‘honeymoon period’. Our brand-new President, going by the American tradition which seems to have been adopted all over the world, should be learning the ropes of his new office, appointing people that will work with him and getting a handle on presiding over the most populous black nation on earth.

In my piece last week, I actually expected Nigerians to give his administration at least a one-month honeymoon grace period before beginning to ask questions about his policies and programmes for the country.

The world over, when a new government assumed office, there are periods – usually from a month but not more than a year – when the government is expected to settle down and get a grip on administration. Known as the honeymoon period, it is a brief period when a new leader is given greater leeway with respect to changes, he or she wishes to make.

Some US Presidents usually get a lot done at the very beginning of their terms, during the ‘honeymoon period’ with Congress before they start asking the tough questions and ratings start to fall. It is the length of time at the start of something new, particularly a new job, in which mistakes may be overlooked.

In a marriage, we are all familiar with the early part in which the couple is infatuated and most passionate with each other.  Former President Barack Obama was a lucky President who enjoyed a honeymoon period twice, at the onset his two terms, but former President Donald Trump hardly enjoyed any. He started facing fire right from his first day on the job. Back home, President Ahmed Bola Tinubu (BAT) seems to have taken after Trump.

Tinubu, due to no fault of anyone, may not enjoy any honeymoon. On the day he was sworn in, Tinubu, speaking off the cuff, declared, and flippantly too, that the subsidy on petrol is gone.

Make no mistake about it, the three leading candidates during the 2023 general elections told Nigerians that the subsidy will have to go and that Nigerians should grind their loins for the tough period ahead when they assume power. The trio of BAT, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi said during their campaigns that subsidy on petrol benefited only a small cabal and that for Nigeria’s survival, the N18.39bn spent on subsidizing petroleum products daily in Nigeria must go. But many Nigerians were not expecting the new President to throw them under the bus right from his inauguration venue.

Many were of the view that since former President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime made provision for subsidy payments in the 2023 budget till the end of June, Tinubu’s government should have used the one-month window it had to dialogue with labour and put in place an effective mechanism that would absolve the shock of the removal of subsidy on fuel.

Tinubu’s pronouncement at Eagles Square on May 29, had immediate repercussions on fuel supply and distribution across the country as major marketers stopped selling the product to motorists. Within the twinkle of an eye, long queues emerged at filling stations that were still selling the product. Many independent marketers immediately adjusted their pump price from N195 per litre to between N400 and N600.

Now, Labour leaders are up in arms against the government even before it settled down for the business of governance. Joe Ajaero, President of the Nigerian Labour Congress, (NLC) described Tinubu’s action as holding a gun to the head of Nigerians and has vowed to resist it, and has directed workers to embark on full-scale industrial action from Wednesday this week unless the Federal Government reverses the price increase.

Since the Nigeria National Petroleum Company (NNPC) Limited came up with a new price template which fixed fuel price in Lagos at N488, the lowest in Nigeria, and N557 for Maiduguri, the highest in the country for now, the ripple effect of the sudden removal of the subsidy has been mostly felt by the masses many of whom can no longer afford the cost of moving from one point to the other due to the high cost of transportation.

Some Nigerians now trek long distances to their various destinations and have justified the act as a good form of exercise that will benefit their health. In fact, the ‘Trekkers Association of Nigeria’ has been formed on social media. Aside from that, a lawmaker in Adamawa State has also acquired an electric bicycle which he said would be his mode of movement from now on. The queues that suddenly appeared at most filling stations a few hours after Tinubu’s pronouncement have disappeared as filling stations complied with the new price template released by the NNPCL.

Many Nigerians have also abandoned their cars at home and have adjusted their schedules to only leave home when it is absolutely necessary. The streets of Lagos are now devoid of the usual large number of vehicles and the perennial traffic snarl that the city is noted for has disappeared, at least for now.

But this is not good for the economy. Market men and women are complaining about the high cost of moving their goods from one point to another. The volume of trade has also dropped as many can no longer afford the cost of most goods and services. This has the potential of shrinking the informal sector of the economy which accounts for more than 70 per cent of the Nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

The government is also looking at how to address the issue as the poor masses seem to have been pushed to the wall. Already, Tinubu has promised to review the salaries of workers across the board and has asked labour leaders to use the opportunity offered to ask for a living wage for their members with the understanding that the N30,000 minimum wage presently in operation in the country is no longer sustainable.

Nigeria ran into trouble with fuel supply and distribution when the nation’s four refineries became comatose and we had to resort to the importation of fuel into the country.  Turnaround maintenance of the refineries became an avenue for those in government to corner huge sums of money to their private pockets without any turning-around in the fortune of the refineries. When the APC government was campaigning for our votes in 2015, it promised to revive the refineries, build new ones and give approval for the establishment of modular refineries across the country by marketers. In actual fact, licensing was issued to 18 companies for the establishment of modular refineries in the country but many of the big players in the downstream sector discovered that it pays to import refined petroleum products into Nigeria than establish a refinery here.

Again, the cabal behind fuel importation won’t easily give up the billions of dollars they are making from government’s inefficiency and did all within their power to frustrate any talk of establishing local refineries in the country. It was not until Aliko Dangote came up with the idea of establishing the biggest refinery in Africa that government officials saw an opportunity to key into his plan and gave the necessary support for the project. The 650,000-capacity crude oil processing plant is expected to start producing refined petroleum products in the next months for both local consumption and export to other African countries. The BUA group is also presently constructing a 200,000-barrel crude oil per day refinery in Akwa Ibom State, which is also expected to come on stream in 2025. Aside from that, two modular refineries are in the works, all geared towards ensuring that Nigeria stops wasting scarce foreign exchange to import refined petrol into the country.

The government has also promised not to be fully involved in the sale of refined petroleum products as the private sector players would now dominate the sector. The removal of subsidy, it is argued, will allow for the private sector to buy crude oil and sell refined fuel at competitive prices which would in the long run, crash the price of fuel at the pumps. Group Chief Executive Officer (GCEO) of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, had said that NNPCL only has the power to import just 30 per cent of refined fuel into the country so that other key players in the sector can move in to engender competitiveness in the sector.

It is an irony that a crude oil-producing nation is in the lurch and at the mercy of a cabal in the oil industry that could hold the nation to ransom. Labour leaders have consistently called on the government to stop the smuggling of petroleum products to our neighbouring countries all to no avail. We consume an average of 40 million litres of petrol in Nigeria but those at the top will tell you that our local consumption figure is between 60 and 68 million litres of petrol daily and the government must pay subsidy on those humongous figures.

The Tinubu administration has the onerous task of finding a permanent solution to the crisis in the oil sector. While many Nigerians are gradually accepting the reality that fuel subsidy is no longer sustainable, the manner Tinubu went about it without first putting palliative in place to cushion the effects on the masses or consulting with necessary stakeholders leaves much to be desired. Though he has said that he campaigned for the tough job and that he is aware of the tasks ahead, he has equally said that Nigerians should not pity him as he is up to those tasks. So, he should carry his can while we sit back and watch how he will wriggle out of his own self-imposed foible.

Like one of the titles of James Hadley Chase’s novel, ‘No Orchids for Miss Blandish’, in essence, there won’t be any honeymoon for President BAT.

See you next week.