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Fuel Subsidy Removal With Impunity: An Intolerable Multiple Tax
On Poverty- By Anyakwee Nsirimovu
The Niger Delta Civil Society Coalition(NDCSC) is most pained
that the government of President Goodluck Jonathan, have
displayed an unparallel lack of sensitivity to the endangering
plights of ordinary Nigerians by going forward to inflict its
multiple taxation on poverty, and the grinding consequences on
millions of unsuspecting Nigerians, that have absolutely nothing
to show as dividend from incredible wealth that have accrued to
the country in the past four decades or thereabout; as evidenced
in the 300 percent increase on petroleum pump price and cost of
living, following the removal of what many intellectual minded
Nigerians consider to be non-existent fuel subsidy.
President Jonathan by so doing even before the conclusion of his
ongoing consultation without substance; and without recourse to
due process of law, have in pleasing the international and local
private interests, broadened most dangerously, the already
unacceptable level of socio-economic inequalities in a country
and government, currently traumatized by absolute lack of
trust, confidence and insecurity, that flow directly from state
instigated structural violence. The BokoHaram crisis must not
be seen solely from the prism of religion, but reactionary
violence in response to state terrorism over time in Nigeria.
It is heinous folly to think or say that Nigerians have
effective open avenues to ventilate their grievances in a
shallow, unresponsive democratic environment.
NDCSC insists that the so-called fuel subsidy removal has
clearly shown the use of abstract economist rhetoric that depict
no principle of humanity, but criminal bandying of 'FACTS' that
reminds of Charles Dickens epic novel 'Hard Times' – data
choreographed and anchored to confuse and deceive, and further
rob the poor, for the benefit of the unmeritorious wealthy men
and women who by corrupt patronage collusion have stolen the
Nigerian Exchequer dry in the first place.
For purposes of arguing without conceding, if there was any
subsidy to be removed, Jonathan as president, would probably
have been the most acceptable person to lead and appeal to
ordinary Nigerians for its removal; but short of his campaign
slogan of rising from the ranks of the poor in the creeks of the
Niger Delta; and not wearing shoes to school in course of his
electioneering campaign, Jonathan has absolutely done nothing to
reassert lost trust and confidence in governance; but
exacerbated the status quo, by clearly siding with the
disingenuous wealthy few who bankrolled him to office with the
people's stolen wealth, and characters he is incapable of
touching.
NDCSC insists that fuel subsidy removal simply translates into
ordinary Nigerians bearing the burden and brunt of subsidizing
official corruption by way of still enriching the hellish
characters that the federal government has been illicitly
enriching over time, as importation of fuel cannot end in the
foreseeable future time, without fixing the basics in the
petroleum corporation and Generation of very corrupt
bureaucrats with impunity.
NDCSC insists that Jonathan's 'transformation agenda' would have
meant a little more than earlier useless agenda's of recent
past, if he had refused to respond in kind or play politics to
what is deemed acts against the nation's laws as epitomised in
matters concerning Justice Salami and the former Chief Justice
of Nigeria; and the assault on the sanctity of the court in the
governor Sylva of Bayelsa state matter. Under Jonathan's watch,
individual deeds of bad public officials have been compensated
in appointments to positions of trust, to further abuse and rob
the nation. Nigerians in dare need for change and socio-economic
justice are yet to see a President willing to enforce the laws
of corruption and independent institutions with the law, and
within the letters of the law. And citizens, contrary to
thinking of those who advise Jonathan, including Ministers, are
fully aware that beyond the law, a government is no longer a
government but a usurped power, and as such it must not be
trusted, but judged.
NDCSC wishes to urgently remind Mr. President and some of his
absurd advisers, that silence nor 'prayers' alone over real life
threatening issues, resulting from sheer incapacity and
incompetence to govern, cannot cleanse the past – it merely
prolongs that sickness of the past into the present and future.
It is noteworthy that when in 213 BC, the Chinese emperor Shin
Huang-ti ordered that every book in his realm should be thrown
to the fire as to destroy all traces (legend has it) of his
mother's adultery, it came to pass that no deed, however
monstrous or trivial, can ever be abolished once committed – not
even by a Chinese emperor, even less by a Nigerian president and
team that fervently believe that Nigerians easily forget, and
can be bribed to look the other way, if they prove a little
stubborn. This is adamantine law of life. The immutability of
the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) led catastrophic regimes at
federal, state and local government levels, since the transition
of May 1999, can no more depend on the whims of its successors
to manipulate and ruin at no cost.
NDCSC calls on ordinary Niger Deltans and Nigerians in general,
that strongly believe that the essence of government in their
lives is the security of lives and property, to insist upon the
federal government dealing absolutely with the matter of
corruption generally and specifically in regard to all known
criminal fictitious importers of petroleum products, that have
garnered billions in 'subsidies' and the those that manage the
Institutions or agencies that are responsible for dishing out
illicit profits. By the same token, Mr. President should be made
to void widening poverty, inequality, insecurity and absolve its
government from tolerating the principle of constitution
without constitutionalism, and fundamentally allow due process
and the rule of law to fully take its full pride of place in
private and public relationships.
NDCSC is convinced that Jonathan's repressive measures in regard
to the state of insecurity in the country will not work. It is
doomed to fail, and will increase violence. Repressive measures
like the recent State of Emergency, leaving the creators of the
instruments of violence in their positions, serves a different
purpose of demonizing the gangs and diverting attention from
societies which are very unequal and getting ever more unequal,
largely due to a lack of will by the government to change the
situation. Jonathan's economic model as championed by Madam
OkonjoIweala is fundamentally exclusive – absence of economic
growth and job creation. Inclusive and integration of the
excluded majority of citizens must be the solution to the
aggrieved and violent.
NDCSC in collaboration with the fully mobilized peoples of the
Niger Delta communities, and all democratic forces in the region
and beyond the region, will hit the streets running in peaceful
protests against the wicked and irresponsible multiple taxation
on poverty which took effect on January 1. The government must
save itself by reverting to the status quo in regard to petrol
pump price, and save the country from utter chaos that no doubt
will result openly or quietly, depending on the methods of
enforcement adopted by state owned militarized law enforcement
machinery.
NDCSC, therefore, strongly calls on the federal government to
restrain itself from buying gullible members with scarce
resources; use arbitrary law enforcement methods as they have
already began to do, to inhumanly crack down on unavoidable
genuine dissenters, and using seductive hawkish terrorism,
security argument as reason for possible genocide. President
Jonathan, as one from the Niger Delta region, cannot afford to
lead the slaughter of Nigerians nor forcibly quench their
speech, association, assembly and movement for protesting
social, economic, political and cultural injustice, which truly
was the kind of struggle that threw him up as president.
NDCSC calls on stakeholders on quality democracy across Nigeria
to shun any illegitimate Board or Committee that is
strategically aimed at prolonging poverty and inequality across
the country through persuasion and palliatives, by stopping the
present Movement that must check impunity of public officials,
their lies, and bad governance for good, since Mr. President on
his own foreclosed dialogue. Nigerians, especially those that
live in the communities and creeks of the Niger Delta, that have
been subsidizing petroleum exploitation with their lives and
livelihoods for over fifty years, are called upon to void
sentiments, but resist this multiple taxation on poverty without
representation, to its logical conclusion, rather than
prolonging dooms day under very fraudulent regimes all levels.
Finally, NDCSC while strongly calling on democratic change
agents across the country to prepare and lend effective shape to
the unthinkable, so that evil forces of horrendous governance in
public and private sector lose most of their numinous quality,
and stands reduced to a few memorable words, at the same time;
urges Mr. President to urgently and critically note that the
responsibility for every citizen assaulted, maimed or
slaughtered by his very destructive agents, in the course of the
present struggle for democracy without substance, will be his
and his alone. ###
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