By Bayo Onanuga
President Jonathan’s handlers did him a disservice Saturday night when he delivered another address to Nigerians on his controversial removal of the fuel subsidy.
The camera did not close on his face, well enough, as he spoke. He appeared so distant from the people he was trying to persuade—a good camera work should have zoomed on the face and give him an eyeball to eyeball contact with the Nigerians watching him in their homes. The broadcast that was highly publicised on the social web simply tanked as the president’s delivery lacked vigor. His voice was listless, very unconvincing. The President simply cut a pathetic picture. Deemed unpersuasive too was the thrust of his message: some dose of cost-cutting from the executive arm of government, a promise to launch a bus service program and his appeal to the people to shun violence and live in harmony, in the wake of the killings in Gombe, Yobe, Adamawa states. Most Nigerian commentators on the web dismissed the president’s speech as puerile. The labour leader Omar Abdulwahed said it was a mere rhetoric.
Concern about the religious killings in Northern Nigeria was less important to the president, judging by the quantum of lines he devoted to the issue: just one paragraph out of 26 paragraphs. It was clear, his main goal was to stop the impending strike by sweet words. But in critics’ view, he ended up a bad communicator.
In offering to cut the basic salary of the political office holders by 25 per cent and curb foreign travels, President Jonathan failed to ignite the sympathy of Nigerians, adamant to shut down the nation’s economy beginning from midnight 8 January. His constitutional right to effect such a slash in salary was doubtful last night as the salaries of public officials were fixed by a commission independent of the president. Thus the President cannot slash what he does not have the power to fix in the first instance. As legal pundits would put it, you do not give what you don’t have.
Apart from this legal faux-pas, most Nigerians are aware that the slash is superficial as basic salary is not the main drain-pipe of government’s funds. Bigger waste pipes are located in the perks political office holders enjoy— a lot of allowances that are multiples of the basic salary; cars, legalised stealing at both the executive and legislative arms and other perks which have ballooned recurrent expenditure at the Federal level to 72 per cent of government expenditure, leaving a miserable 28 per cent to 159 million Nigerians.
In the wake of the removal of the subsidy, Nigerians have been particularly outraged by some of the outlandish provisions in this year’s budget for the presidency. For example, the President’s kitchen has a provision of N300 million to buy cutlery and N1 billion to buy food for the President and his deputy. The same year the President inflicts economic pains on his people, he wants to spend N240 million buying bullet proof cars for himself and his deputy.
Although the President denied he was inflicting pains on the people, his argument will fail to elicit the understanding that he so much craves from his countrymen.
Most Nigerians see the New Year Day announcement of subsidy withdrawal as a betrayal of trust, and a big stab on the back; most are already bearing the brunt of the economic hardship the one week policy has engendered and most cannot just understand why their president is offering palliatives after he had dealt them serious machete cuts, economically.
It is a case of putting the cart of palliatives before the horse of subsidy removal.
Most Nigerians have wondered why the President failed to fix the refineries, invest in new ones and stop the absurdity of petrol importation by Africa’s biggest crude oil producer, before pushing the price increase to Nigerians. Most Nigerians have also wondered why the president shirked his responsibility to try to probe the ballooning of oil subsidy payments from the N250 billion budgeted to N1.3 trillion in 2011, why he failed to drastically reduce the outrageous cost of politics and governance before taking away the only benefit the ordinary Nigerians enjoyed from the state.
Besides, most Nigerians are promise-weary and wary as past promises by governments on palliatives have never been fully implemented.
- Bayo Onanuga is the editor-in-chief of THENEWS and P.M.NEWS