One of my greatest fears about the future of Nigeria is our collective loss of the capacity for anger. It is exciting and instructive that we are today recovering our collective capacity to be angry. It was the Cameroonian author, Celestin Monga, who reminded us in his book, The Anthropology of Anger: Civil Society and Democracy in Africa, that the capacity of civil society and citizens in Africa to advance the democratization agenda of their countries is a function of their ability to express outrage at the destruction of their societies and its assets by selfish ruling classes.
The nouns that define how we feel are important indications of our capacity to act. Anger, rage, fury, ire, wrath, resentment and indignation are vital elements in creating human agency and carrying out a real transformation agenda. Fury denotes our marked displeasure at a particular situation and demonstrates we have not given up and substituted passive sadness for anger. Every week, Nigerians are inundated with news stories about massive corruption and bad governance. The least we can do is show our indignation at how our rulers are ruining our country.
Following the end of the Second World War, the anger of Nigerians at British misrule boiled. Nigeria had a leadership that could channel the anger. Herbert Macaulay, Michael Imoudu and Nnamdi Azikiwe organized a national strike in 1945 and in 1946, toured 153 communities to get the popular mandate to end colonial rule and use Nigerian resources for Nigerian development.
In Kano, Ibadan, Enugu and Lagos, tens of thousands of Nigerians turned up in the “cost of living” demonstrations and the death knell of colonialism was sounded. Herbert Macaulay, an 82-year-old “angry nationalist”, died on his way back from the Kano rally. The British authorities, seeing the anger of the people, were forced to stop making the claims that the nationalist leaders were talking for the elite and not for the masses.
Today, Nigerians are angry because President Goodluck Jonathan annoyed them on New Year’s Day by breaking his bond on creating conditions for Nigerians to enjoy a breath of fresh air. He did this by increasing the pump price of petrol (PMS) by over a hundred per cent. By this act, Nigerians were guaranteed to suffer extremely high costs for transport, food and other essentials. It is a policy decision aimed at deepening poverty and the suffering of Nigerians. Hundreds of thousands of Nigerians were unable to return from their holidays because of the escalation of transport costs beyond their pockets.
Today, Nigerian citizens are furious because they are being told only the cartel benefits from the downstream sector of the Nigerian economy. They know that they are all paying more for food, for transport and for every other thing. From today, Nigerians are expressing their anger because a cabal pocketed over $8 billion last year in the name of a fuel subsidy that was escalated beyond all reasonable bounds to promote massive theft of national resources.
From today, millions of Nigerians all over the country will be out in the streets and newly created Freedom Squares, angrily protesting against the misery and suffering imposed on them by the acts of the Goodluck Jonathan Administration. Nigerians are so angry that they are ready to call the President’s bluff that he can make them suffer as he pleases and as it pleases his bosses in the IMF and the World Bank. Nigerians are in the streets to make the point that Nigeria is a sovereign and democratic country, and its citizens reserve the Constitutional right to demand for good governance while the President has the Constitutional obligation to promote the rights and welfare of Nigerians.
Nigerians are angry because the price of petroleum products has been ‘adjusted’ or increased eighteen times in the last 26 years starting from a raise in the pump price of petrol from 3.15 kobo per litre to 20 kobo per litre in April 1985. In all the previous attempts, Nigerians were able to stop the government of the day from completely imposing world market prices on the only entitlement they have – relatively cheap petrol.
Nigerians are in the streets to tell the Jonathan Administration that he will fail like the others because he has refused to address the core problem of corruption in the downstream sector, as opposed to ‘subsidy’ removal. Similarly, the annoying argument of the Minister of Finance, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, that subsidy is unsustainable has been elaborately argued by experts to be fraudulent and untenable.
The decision of President Jonathan to stop the consultations with stakeholders, take a unilateral decision on the “fuel subsidy” issue and then establish a negotiation body after implementing his unilateral decision is very disrespectful to Nigerians. The people feel passionately about this issue. It is indeed true that the amount spent on fuel subsidy is so large that it has forced us as a nation to abandon our development goals and is in addition, accelerating our indebtedness. The reality however is that the ‘subsidy’ is the greatest fraud in our nation’s history, as monumental amounts are criminally being paid out to government cronies who return the money to their political godfathers.
Nigerians are indignant because the Government has presented an elaborate propaganda document called Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Programme (SURE). The programme proposes ambitious commitments to social safety nets, public works, youth employment, Niger Delta development and agricultural development programmes. The shopping list is a barefaced lie as the total amount paid out as fuel subsidy cannot pay for even one-fifth of the activities listed.
Today, Nigerians are furious because many have been killed for simply making legitimate demands that government reverts to the N65 price for petrol. There is massive discontent against the pre-emptive and unilateral action of Government in truncating consultations and implementing a 138% increase in the pump price of petroleum products; the application of excessive power to muzzle legitimate citizen dissent and rejection of the ‘subsidy’ removal; the deplorable state of the nation and the waning legitimacy and trust in the capacity of this Government to preserve the integrity and well being of Nigeria. To calm Nigerians down, the Goodluck Jonathan Presidency must immediately meet the demands.
Goodluck Jonathan must immediately sack the ministers of finance and petroleum for fraudulently arguing for an economic reform package that not only places immediate and sustained hardship on Nigerians but promises to threaten Nigeria’s hard earned democracy.
The Presidency must immediately revert to the status quo ante by reinstating the N65/litre pump price and continue the consultations with stakeholders on how to resolve the issue of massive corruption in the management of the subsidy regime, if any.
President Goodluck Jonathan must immediately purge himself of pernicious contempt for the National Assembly as he has acted outside the purview of their powers to legislate and exercise oversight in his decision to increase the price of petrol and unilaterally establish an organ to manage the ‘huge gains’ from the ‘removal of subsidy’. The National Assembly is therefore called upon not to award any legitimacy to the ‘subsidy’ removal and the proposed reinvestment initiative (SURE).
Citizens of Nigeria have the right to dissent and to freedom of expression as guaranteed by Chapter IV of the 1999 CFRN as amended. Government must direct security agencies to respect and protect the rights of Nigerians as they engage and demand for good governance and accountability. The killing of Nigerians by security agents must stop.
As for political parties, they should recognize and lend solidarity to the struggles of the Nigerian people in whose interests and from whom they draw legitimacy and purpose for sustaining our nascent democracy.
As we, citizens of Nigeria, set out from our homes to demonstrate in the various Freedom Squares we have created, may God give us the strength and resilience to effectively mobilize and join forces to resist the unilateral and obnoxious ‘subsidy’ removal policy that places upon us extreme hardship and undermines not only our human dignity but also our sovereignty. The moment to show that sovereignty belongs to the Nigerian people and not to his Excellency, the President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, has arrived.
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