Subsidy Reinvestment: Conspiracy against the urban poor?

In our country, government officials a wont to be politically correct at all costs. Even civil servants here have in time past been sworn to costra nostra like oaths of secrecy. Mallam Sanusi Lamido, our Central Bank’s governor, is however not a member of this class of straight-laced elites of whom the late Fela Kuti sang zombie o zombie. For instance, in an article on why he supports government’s deregulation policy, the good mallam opined that the phrases “average Nigerian business man” and “Nigerian entrepreneur” are “polite euphemisms for rent seeking parasites”. He however went further to say this; “I am not complaining about insults –I am used to that. I just believe that an insult is not an argument and when people resort to personal abuse, they have run out of logic”. Touché!!!

Frank talk may be a costlier commodity than its unqualified brother but it is cheap nonetheless. For Mallam Sanusi to believe that PMS is just “fuel used by the middle class to drive around town and from city to city; not to employ workers and produce goods and services” leads one to suspect that –In spite of his sincerity– he is far removed from the plight of ordinary Nigerians. Our CBN governor thinks that all “those speaking now on the internet and on Facebook and Twitter and newspapers are not workers but middleclass elite who use PMS in their smart cars”; for which cause he admonishes us to “stop all the ideological pretenses”. Perhaps one needs to point out to Mallam Sunusi –and the rest of the folks advising President Jonathan– that the reason why modern-day protests are characterized by a huge presence in the social media is the cheapness of that media; not to mention the government-imposed restrictions with regards to traditional forms of mass mobilization. It is –and one make this point strongly– not a matter of some elitist social standing.

One should also point out to the CBN governor that there are today, in the Orile-Iganmu, Ajegule and Mushin slums of Lagos perhaps tens of thousands of young people holed up in thousands of make-shift music studios, all working hard on their lyrics and rhythms and dreaming of becoming the next 2face Idibias or Daddy Shokeys or Mike Okris. These people rely on PMS for their businesses and I do not reckon that they qualify as “middleclass elite who use PMS in their smart cars”. The barbers, the vulcanizers, the street photographers, okada riders, and bukataria owners all also rely on PMS –little thanks in part to PHCN. There are, in every one of our cities, millions young graduates, working hard on their first jobs ever, who spend close to 60% of their monthly income on transport fares alone. These were the folks whose voices –or should I say status-updates and tweets– rang loudest on Facebook and Twitter. And yes, they were also joined by their disgruntled friends who –as a result of the prevalent unemployment in the land­–have resorted to fraud by emails aka Yahoo-Yahoo as full time employment.  I think the Lamido Sanusis of Nigeria need to pay some attention to these people.

I write this rejoinder not because I seek to highlight what the CBN governor missed out in his article. No, I write because there appears from Goodluck Jonathan’s Subsidy Reinvestment and Empowerment Program (SURE-P) a conspiracy against the urban poor; who –I posit–have been wrongly lumped together with “middleclass elite who use PMS in their smart cars”. It appears that, rather than empower this class of Nigerians, SURE-P seeks to annihilate them. To be sure, the proposal provides for such things as cash grants to rural women, maternal and child care programs for the same said rural folks, agric loans, mass transit intervention schemes and road rehabilitation projects. Save for the mass transit scheme, which I reckon will –like the proposed rail projects–have an inter-state or long distance focus, there are no short term palliatives to subsidy removal for the urban poor in SURE-P. Conversely however, it is this class of Nigerians who will bear the brunt deregulation the most.

Rural folks spend little of their income on transport and even the costs of transporting farm produce to markets are ultimately borne by the urban consumer population. So as transportations costs escalate for everyone, the rural population defrays it on the cost of their produce and this in turn leads to increased food costs for urban folks alone. Throw in the fact that the subsidy on Kerosene –a fuel used by 89% of the urban population of Lagos for instance– has also been removed; it becomes alarming that nothing has been proposed on SURE-P to carter to the urban poor. These folks will pay more for their transport, food and household fuels while their incomes will remain static. They will also sit back and watch as cash grants are doled out to rural women. Call it baboon dey suffer monkey dey wack and you will be spot on.