Fuel price: Nigerians now dice in their hands

By Morayo Kehinde Again, Nigerians were confronted with the shocking news of another fuel price hike yesterday, 9th October, 2024. This has become an embarrassing recurring decimal for a government that has now revealed itself as nothing but the enemy of the common man. On May 23, 2023, fuel sold for N198 per litre. After […]

By Morayo Kehinde

Again, Nigerians were confronted with the shocking news of another fuel price hike yesterday, 9th October, 2024. This has become an embarrassing recurring decimal for a government that has now revealed itself as nothing but the enemy of the common man.

On May 23, 2023, fuel sold for N198 per litre. After President Bola Tinubu’s historic “subsidy is gone” pronouncement during his inaugural speech at the Eagle Square, there was an immediate jump from N198 to N540. On July 18, NNPC outlets again began to sell fuel at N617 per litre. What we were told was that it was due to the dynamics of a market-regulated pricing model. We swallowed the bitter pill.

Still, on September 3, 2024, fuel price increased to N897 per litre. Nigerians shouted, cried, took to the streets to protest and were brutally resisted. That wound had hardly healed when the shocker of a new N1,030 per litre price hit the waves.

Now, the questions on the lips of everyone, even those who supported the All Progressives Congress during the 2023 elections is: who did we offend? Who punished us with calamity in the garb of governance?

Inflation rate has risen to its highest level in two decades, at 26.72 per cent. Manufacturers are no longer able to produce, owing to a very harsh operating environment. Suicide rate has risen to an unbearable limit in a country where about N30bn is being used to renovate a single official’s residence and overheads of the Villa alone in a year is also about that.

And one thing Nigerians have witnessed, which has never happened under any other democratically elected government is the resort to dictatorial actions by the Tinubu administration over those who voted them into power. By the way, they are sitting on one-third of the mandate. And the one-third still has k-leg.

It seems they are aware of the ‘shege’ they plan to show Nigerians, reason they have tactically put fear in the minds of the youths, and indeed all Nigerians, against protests. It is only in Tinubu’s Nigeria that peaceful protests have suddenly turned treasonable activity.

To add salt to injury, the so-called corruption agency, which calls itself anti-corruption agency would begin to insult the intelligence of Nigerians with unwarranted drama when corruption is running riot under their noses and around those who gave them the portfolio. Many Nigerians are students of history. We know the atrocities that have been committed and are still being committed by “yahoo men” in power who have turned Nigerians into dice in a dangerous ludo game.

Don’t let them whine you. They came well prepared because they have studied the Nigerian script. If someone gives birth on a wrong day in the Villa, for instance, they will say ask your governors. If Nigerians protest, they will say you should tell your governors to return the money they stole. Kai! Who did this to us? Corruption mafias are fighting corruption and we’re not telling them to start from their backyards?

We are playing with fire. Fuel price may still hit N2,000 in a few weeks. They don’t care. We will keep hearing that these are painful corrections in an economy that had been allegedly battered by former President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration. APC government accusing APC government.

When a situation is deeper than tears, what follows is strategic exit. The only way out of this slavery is to chase dark hearted, insensitive leaders out of power with your votes in 2027. It is around the corner. Let’s persevere.

Morayo Kehinde, a software engineer, writes from Detroit, Michigan, United States.