An enduring memory of the regime of deceit and chicanery piloted by former head of state Ibrahim Babangida was the huge debate club it once turned Nigeria into as to whether the federal government should take a $2.4 billion loan offered to it by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to rescue the nation’s struggling economy. Devaluation of the naira, fuel subsidy reduction and other conditions set by the supranational financial organisation in 1985 had sparked public uproar, on account of which the military administration decided to throw the matter open for the public to debate.
The idea for the loan had come at a time Nigerians were growing weary of the repeatedly postponed date for the country’s transition to democratic governance, hence the growing public suspicion of every move made by the administration that had become reputed for double-speak. Babangida, who many also believed might have orchestrated the debate to divert public attention away from his endless transition programme and the strident calls on the junta to hand power over to an elected government, had said there was no alternative to the IMF loan.
His pronouncement provoked another round of public outrage, including the famous reaction of a renowned economist, the late Prof. Samuel Aluko, who retorted that there is nothing in life without an alternative. If peace has its alternative as war and life has its as death, an alternative to the IMF loan should be the easiest to fetch, he argued. Opposition voices to the IMF loan eventually prevailed. The Babangida regime declined it and initiated the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) with the attendant hardship, inflation and social unrest as consequences.
Four decades later, events have turned full circle and the nation is once again divided into two camps of those in support of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration’s decision to withdraw the subsidy on fuel price which for decades had been a drain pipe with which a circle of the business elite diverted our common patrimony into their private pockets and turned a well intentioned programme into a burden for the larger public, and those who wants the old order restored in the hope of getting fuel at cheaper rates.
The latter group is made up of largely ignorant Nigerians who are either blinded by sentiments or are not endowed with enough intellect to see the prosperous future intended by the Tinubu government’s economic reforms, on account of which subsidy payments on imported fuel were withdrawn. For this group, all the indices highlighted by the World Bank and other global rating agencies as pointers to future prosperity resulting from the removal of fuel subsidy and other economic policies of the sitting government do not make an iota of sense unless petrol returns to N65 per litre and a long loaf of bread is obtainable with N100.
As the question persisted over what other candidates aspiring for the presidency in 2027 would do differently from Tinubu who already has his fingers on every pie by his sound economic policies, it suddenly occurred to Atiku that the only option left was to pledge reversal of a policy that has transformed state governments from poverty to affluence, taking advantage of illiterate, ignorant or uninformed citizens who understand little or nothing beyond the price of bread or beans. It is not for no reason that the former vice president has targeted vernacular radio stations for interviews and campaigns.
Atiku plans to push the narrative that Tinubu is running an insensitive government which has set out deliberately to make Nigerians suffer by removing the subsidy on fuel price. But which is the bigger suffering between driving into a filling station to buy fuel at N1,200 without any hassle or delay and the old system of fixing fuel price at N200 only for people to sleep at filling stations for two days because the supplies meant for such stations were diverted to Ghana, Togo, Benin Republic and other neighbouring countries?
By his policy rigmarole, the former vice president may have drawn the ire of many state governors whose fortunes have improved dramatically with the removal of fuel subsidy. He may have drawn the battle line with millions of university students who would not have been able to go to the university without the student loan programme funded mainly with the gains from subsidy removal. He is about to incur the wrath of pensioners who, for the first time in decades, are not only getting paid as and when due but are also enjoying an improved package and payment of arrears.