Fuel price hike: The good, the bad, the ugly…

The relationship between Labour (the NLC) and the opposition (APC, from AD on) in Nigeria’s 4th Republic is one of the least celebrated and visible to the common eye, yet it has been the most ubiquitous and procreative of any relationships almost surpassing that of the PDP or the APC – standing on their own. […]

The relationship between Labour (the NLC) and the opposition (APC, from AD on) in Nigeria’s 4th Republic is one of the least celebrated and visible to the common eye, yet it has been the most ubiquitous and procreative of any relationships almost surpassing that of the PDP or the APC – standing on their own. It was a relationship forged in the foundry of Labour’s (NLC’s) regular battles of attrition with the PDP. The first harvest of the relationship, of course, was Adams Oshiomhole, governor of Edo. The other harvest of the NLC – opposition relationship is the Buhari presidency! Of course, the PDP’s leadership crises, its internal democratic politics, of salaries of workers in its last year and fuel price hikes “over and over again” helped forge the Labour (NLC) opposition relationship and APC’s victory.
The suspended fuel price hike is therefore the most significant test or stress that the relationship will or is going through. The APC government itself was messing up its historic marriage with Labour in ways that indicated a failure to recognize a change in roles from opposition to government in power. It is impossible to come down with one characterization for the APC, government, Labour and other stakeholders. But we can talk of the good, the bad, the ugly and the direct.
The president, taciturn as ever, and expecting Nigerians to understand and believe his predicament because of his believability was not communicating enough. The directness also comes out with government efforts, failed in the past as it were, to refurbish refineries, which were working at only 30% of installed capacity; an effort that was being sabotaged by the Avengers. Labour was, not mollified.    
From the ugly you have the indefatigable Adams Oshiomhole, graduate from trench warfare in the Obasanjo days who imagined that Labour should understand that, “the fundamentals have changed” shed its history, tradition and integrity borne out of resistance to fuel price hikes. So the same forces that helped erect him, the new Labour oligarchy should refuse to play. Oshiomhole was so ugly, he would destroy the bridge after crossing it, for present day expediency. 
And then here comes the bad, the man with a colonial knife, the divide and rule tactician Senator Dr. Chris Ngige. The Labour Minister, quite easily, perhaps, childishly misunderstood a Labour uprising as his ministerial failing and therefore proceeded with an archaic divide and rule tactic, complete with an old-fashioned ethnic twist. Of course the cessation of hostilities by the NLC had little to do with the ugly’s theatricals or his tactics.
Space for the good, will be occupied by Senator Shehu Sani, Senator Ahmed Tinubu and the NLC, institutionally and personally by its leader, Comrade Wabba. While Adams Oshiomhole was bringing down the bridge he’d crossed, Ngige was dividing it up, Sani and Tinubu were acknowledging the strategic, historic alliance between Labour and the erstwhile opposition APC, midwifed into power by circumstances now in play. Sani would now courageously make a most quotable statement of which type is a rarity in the 4th Republic advising integrity, consistency, vision, history and the future “Our quest for justice and equity must not depend on the government or persons in power but most depend upon the matters of principle at hand. Those who stood against increases in the price of petroleum products yesterday and stood for it today have betrayed the very principle which they claim to represent”.          
Senator Tinubu, the Asiwaju’s assuagements of Labour constituted an indictment of government, a rebuke of the ugly and a query for the bad – who ironically was on the Tinubu entourage each time he met labour. More strategically, however, these assuagements were in congruence with Senator Sani and Wabba: “without you and your support, we couldn’t have won the election” a telling and pointed reminder to the historic and strategic relationship that certain groups and elements within his party were oblivious of. “I want to appeal to you, I have come to beg you… let us call off this strike, it is not done on the street; …we will end up negotiating and agreeing with one another.”
So why were negotiations not perfected in the first place? Why was Labour literally encouraged into the strike without sufficient negotiations and “proper communication?” Given its antecedents on the subject matter at hand, Labour ought to be clear to the opposition people, now in government, including Oshiomhole,  or Sani or Ngige that in order to keep its history and integrity, Wabba was supposed to call out the troops upon an attempt at a fuel price hike. So what should government have done?
To answer that we must first read out NLC’s demand list: review power and fuel tariff, give us assurances that fuel price will go down after your deregulation, give us assurances that post-deregulation, there will be no privatization of the erstwhile monopolies and the inevitable lay-offs that follow. Furthermore, give us assurances that your TAM of NNPC refineries, ever so unreliable in resolving local production of petroleum products, will work under your watch. Give us assurances that long term, your regulatory framework will pave local production for all petroleum products and therefore pave diversification, downward price reviews upon a competitive interplay of public and private refineries, (and) employment generation and other multiplier benefits.
Now there is nothing Labour was asking that government couldn’t, shouldn’t do, either forced by fiscal circumstances or actually intended to. The only gap that actually existed was that of communication. Yes, Buhari had said he wouldn’t remove subsidies. This was completely overtaken now by government fiscal poverty – you are broke so how can you sustain the subsidy regime? Outside that, Labour and government were virtually married on almost all the other matters.
So with a little more communication or negotiation, preceding action by government, itself left without fiscal choice, agreement should have been eked out, especially so from a government, adept with fishing historically with Labour, and who should have worried that, failing to do this, would allow the PDP, now in opposition, to exploit Labour position and embarrass their government. This was therefore, a most needless strike!
Be that as it may, we must ask a simple question: if not for the fiscal calamities government has gotten into, didn’t the Buhari presidency contemplate a strategic option around Labour’s requests to resolve this perennial fuel price challenge? These are the types of critical national issues that are resolved when debate protocols hold sway and candidates are forced to bring out their economic and other agenda ahead of arriving on the leadership scene. We shall address this in subsequent pieces.

Agbinda wrote this piece from Abuja