The voice of the people….

It’s been a week of total shut down of public and private business activities in the country, the like of which has been rare. It is the nearest Nigerians have come to say they have put up with many silly and tomfoolery actions of many governments but this time ‘’so far and no further.’’ This […]

It’s been a week of total shut down of public and private business activities in the country, the like of which has been rare. It is the nearest Nigerians have come to say they have put up with many silly and tomfoolery actions of many governments but this time ‘’so far and no further.’’ This time around the demonstrations have not been limited to workers, the unemployed graduates down on their luck and the downtrodden but also important personalities, law makers, professional groups such as lawyers and doctors. Even religious leaders have joined in as imams and priests including the babalawos complete with their beads and all- have found it worth their while to come out to chant anti government slogans and urge the government to re-think.

Why would Nasir El-Rufai- a former minister, yes, and the same one that acted with so much fastidiousness to city plans and pulled down buildings that were built on areas of the city not meant for buildings and without any thought for those he was turning into destitution, join in the anti- government protests? But not him alone, others that included members of the national assembly and a host of former government people who discarded their resplendent togas and donned the workman’s apparel of felt cap, faded T-shirts, tattered jeans with running sneakers also showed up alongside mammoth crowd to demonstrate that government was backing up the wrong course and it should retrace its step. Are they consciously committing class suicide or simply bitten by the proletarian bug?  Less charitable people may see something very much like opportunism , even populism in their venturing out to join the masses in chanting the Nigeria Labour Union’s (NLC) anthem of ‘’backward never; forward ever and solidarity for ever,’’ that suffused the air at the rallies. Others may say it was all aimed at reclaiming the limelight they lost when they left their high offices and that all the aggravation they put up with at the rallies was a way to draw attention to themselves, with the hope that they would be reabsorbed into government. Well, everyone is entitled to his view.

The fact remains however that for deeming it necessary to make common cause with the people thereby joining them to stand shoulder to shoulder to make the point clearly that all the government’s sophistry and fallacies about the subsidy goes to no issue and would not wash, shows their intrinsic humanity for being able to feel for the less privileged. By the way, it is worth noting that there has been some improvement on the manner the security outfits engaged with demonstrators. To be sure, there have been a few unfortunate deaths caused partly by the egregiousness of a few demonstrators and also partly by a few trigger happy policemen and women, who, it is hoped by now, must have been told they should rein in their itchiness to resort to their guns. If the demonstrations continue, the security outfits would need to be even more cautious in the way they go about their duty of policing the demonstration. The ongoing demonstrations cannot be equated to a war front which gives license to shoot to kill. In this groundswell of opposition against a policy capable of inducing poverty, it is the duty of everyone to ensure he looks out for the interest of others, because when the effects begin to manifest in everyone’s pocket no one would be exempted.

All the foregoing is a way of saying Nigerians are all for government to re-consider its position, if for nothing other than the fact that for a very long time Nigerians, in their multitude and from all corners of this country have spoken with one voice to repudiate the removal of fuel policy. And as they say the voice of the people is the voice of God. A point so succinctly illustrated by the mass of people that gather peacefully every day in many parts of the country to register their point since this anti- subsidy removal action commenced. If ours is indeed a democracy it should be taken that the people have spoken—and it is a loud ringing no, which any government that purports to derive its powers from the people should heed, in its own interest. Put another way, were the issue put to a simple yes or no vote- the no vote would carry the day by an overwhelming margin. It is a fact that should not be wished away and dismissed by the proponents of this policy.

All along proponents of the policy—most of whom are in the inner recesses of government -have carried on with a know-it –all certainty that Nigeria would not come to any grieve when the policy is implemented, as if they were just arriving Nigeria from some never-never land. Nigerians know first hand and all too well too, the deleterious effect of this kind of ill-thought out austerity measures. They bring nothing good except to further pauperize the mass of the people. In the 80s, the structural adjustment programme (SAP) achieved one thing:- it wiped off the Nigerian middle class. It was the time when Nigerian professors used their cars as taxis in order to make extra money for the up-keep of their families. Of course, many of them voted with their feet by fleeing to other countries, especially the US policy and Europe, an exodus that accentuated the brain- drain syndrome from which the universities are yet to recover.

Those without the knowledge and the skills to take elsewhere stayed put and proceeded to make their living any which the way they can- by helping themselves to other people’s property, most times forcibly. And that was how armed robbery incidents now so viciously rampant were spawned.  It is incredible that those trotting about government corridors have short memories, and in the bid to do the biddings of those who dictate to them from the IMF and the World Bank, as well as leaders in the world financial capitals, they do not mind repeating a mistake made not too long ago whose negative result would be to further cause social and economic dislocation and instability in the country.

The discredited policies of the IMF and World Bank are well documented in Professor Joseph Stiglitz’s books, the Roaring Nineties which details the experiences of Asian countries whose societies were decimated by crises when they implemented these same policies; and how they were able to return to the path of economic growth and prosperity when the policies were discarded.  If the government is looking for alternatives, it needn’t look any further.