Juma’a mai kyau

I remember some time in 2012, at the height of the Occupy Nigeria protest movement against the removal of government subsidies on petroleum products. I also remember the feeling of profound moral imperative for fighting the good fight against the government of Goodluck Jonathan. It was a truly popular and national movement that was so significant to the history of Nigeria it has left cultural imprints on the collective national consciousness. At the end of the day, the movement met government negotiators in the middle.

The immediate president, Muhammadu Buhari, was the opposition leader at that time and was also Nigeria’s, or northern Nigeria’s patron saint. His declaration that no Nigerian should, under any circumstances, pay more than N40 for PMS otherwise, he or she is being ripped off by the state. That chicken came home to roost after his own ascension to power, and when it did, he came off as a two-bit charlatan who was only after the cookie jar and nothing else.  

The average Nigerian knows almost nothing about the complex macroeconomic fundamentals cited by experts and policymakers arguing against sustaining the subsidy regime. All they know and can understand or care to understand are its impacts on their microeconomic fortunes. Furthermore, he or she does not trust our politicians and administrators behind any such agenda – because Nigerian political culture has no provision for honour and virtue, and the imperative of trusting public servants to steer the ship of state with the public good in their minds. This means that the real obstacle is not the subject of understanding, or lack thereof, but that neither side of the equation recognises the binding social contract between them, more or less considering it a useless “boko-ist” idea, a mere formality.

It took only a few hours after a few words from the new president on the subject of petroleum subsidy for the entire petroleum value chain to go haywire. That was technically his very first act as president, even though the legislative wherewithal has already been nullified because, for one, the Petroleum Industry Act stipulates the termination of the subsidy regime six months into the law coming into force. It is also noteworthy that there is no provision for subsidy expenditure in the 2023 Appropriation Act passed by the National Assembly. 

So here we are now.

The Nigeria Labor Congress, an umbrella body of industrial unions last week declared a national strike to protest the termination of government subsidy on petroleum products. Representatives of the NLC commenced formal engagement with the new government with the hope of resolving the disagreement and averting the deleterious consequences any such industrial action would bring to bear on the already sad fortunes of the Nigerian economy at this material time. 

The NLC is now a shadow of its past. I remember its sorties during the mid-2000s; how they were able to stand their ground and get their way during the Obasanjo administration. It has since lost its punch, which included the popular goodwill it commanded.

The NLC has grown into an uninspiring dud which is only good for screaming bloody murder when energy prices soar or when its memberships want bigger monthly paychecks. Its bare-minimum, consumerist obsession and vacuous sense of imagination are indeed saddening. These days, you forget they even exist.

The congress seems to care or act even with how workers are losing their jobs en-masse, while working conditions are abysmal to say the least, while workers go months and even years on end with no pay, while Chinese and Indian employers have given slavery a new name, when economic stagnation is slowly but surely snuffing the life out of an already shrinking middle class, causing the pronounced emergence of a socioeconomic demographic known as the “precariat” – an agglutination of the words “precarious” and “proletariat” coined by a Japanese economic analyst.

The notice issued by the congress has stricken the same chord of our collective consciousness. It’s very remarkable today that almost no one has so much as heard about the notice – and even more so actually don’t give a hoot about any intervention involving the NLC.

That perhaps played the determinant role in convincing the NLC to call off the planned action. That is a good thing too, not least for the fact that that means that we are slowly but surely growing up, and while at it institutionalising accountability in the manner the Sword of Damocles fulfills that role.

The Hausa say that “Juma’a mai kyau, tun daga Laraba ake ganeta” – you can predict a good Friday as far back as a Wednesday. Now, things don’t just happen, they are effects of deductive causalities and their reductive consequences. The Hausa thus argue that you can see a good future coming from a thousand miles, and by the same token can also see a bad day from that same vantage.

It has been quite rough on Nigerians – but this was the sobering necessity, the shock therapy almost everyone believes we need to move forward as a country. A remarkable thing is that we, despite all, are willing to give Tinubu’s government the benefit of the doubt.

For Nigeria, this is yet another sunrise, an event that has gotten off to an unfortunate start because the new leadership has chosen now to start on a firmly objective base by making very tough decisions. Even with how stinging these decisions are economically, I personally believe that this is a great breakthrough, more so if the president does not yield and will not be cowed by agitators.

Like many, I find myself ready to brave the pain, by granting the president the benefit of the doubt – a gesture some of us were ready to give their sweat and blood to stand against in 2012.

It, therefore, depends on your political value system to determine what to believe. If you can’t find it in your heart to trust this decision, and can’t understand or even accept that this will ever translate into a better deal for us all as citizens, then you will interpret this as a feel of things to come by Friday.

Like many, I prefer to believe that this policy action is the inflection point we have chosen to commence the tortuous journey to redemption, so I believe we have a legendary TGIF theme to celebrate come Friday.  

Allah ya nuna mana wannan Juma’a!