Government as Father Christmas

By 

Omorodion Uwaifo

The on-going quarrel over the oil industry has left all with much sound and heat. Proponents of deregulation say it is better for the people. The opponents say that the proponents are liars who want to buy up the industry to make money at the expense of the people. After all, they see those who rule as actors and different from the government. They exchanged brickbats and then they talked. Opponents later agreed with deregulation if it would be in phases. They agreed too, to a seven and a half per cent rise in the current prices.

What interests one is what both sides say that they work for the people. Like me, most people ask, how? To answer this, one has to hear what they often say. The proponents say that they are weary of selling the product at less than it costs them to put it in the market place given many other things that they have to do with the people's money. Yet, the state spends many millions of naira a day to give the people fuel at the same pump price wherever they may be in the country. As with oil, so it is with electricity. However, that industry does not get the kind of relief that the major oil marketers get. And NEPA would be right to point at that as a factor in its decline.

A newspaper reported one opponent to have said, 'we produce this oil and we should be able to get it at the price that we can afford.' Yet, one's experience in Lagos is that the people sell kerosene at N32.50 per litre as against the pump price of N17.00. Step a few metres out of any petrol station today and you would find hawkers who dispense it in jerry cans at N45.00 per litre. And these hawkers and buyers are the people themselves. So who is kidding whom?

Everyone wants the state to build every thing, even houses for the people. Many would argue that states perform poorly yet, everyone thinks that it is their duty to provide roads, railway, seaports and so on. Government is everyone's father, but papa is dying under a yoke that it cannot bear.

There is contradiction in all of this. If the state, the proponent, cannot sell fuel at a price lower than the cost to supply, where does it find the money to sell it throughout the country at the same pump price? Why should it charge less than it costs it to do business? The answer might be that it is in politics and not in business. And wouldn't that be a perfect reason too, for it to back off and deregulate?

But if it must deregulate shouldn't it send a bill to the House to scrap the law that set up the petroleum equalisation fund? After all, that is the bigger insult to the oil states and the greater cynical use of power. It makes the product available to the larger part of the country at a huge cost. And isn't that cost borne, at least in part, by a minority that has no say in what it does? You destroy their land to get at the product. Then you sell it to them at the same price as to others who know nothing of what they suffer. They have governments, but they too, have no say in the mining that devastates them. They have no more nights, no more farms and no more fish to catch. That, the constitution says is worth thirteen per cent of the taxes that the FG gets from oil. And much of the country is up in arms to ask why they should get that much. For other allocations, you hand them a pittance because you over-state the population of others.

The people need food to survive, but they pay through the nose for it. The powerful makes sure of that. After all, for every little rise in the price of fuel they raise cost of transport by one hundred per cent or more. They need fuel for their trucks, but they would always get that back from the people. They also need it for their generators and their cars. But they cannot charge that to any one so the ploy would be to make the same people rise in protest against the hike. Why have they who claim to work for the people failed to put their efforts where the greater benefits to the people lie? Why have they not asked for a law to establish food equalisation fund? Why have they not got the people to rise against greedy transport owners?

Are they confused or do they lack honesty? If they are confused then maybe they need to write down what they want. If they do they would be better able to know their priorities. They might even try to put costs to them. Perhaps then they would know that government couldn't do it all. That might make them see that given all that the country has to do to be where it should be, even the oil resource is as nothing.

What should the people's transport priorities be? It would be hard to see any one of them who would ask for cheap petrol. The elite would, for they have the cars. roads, railway, water transport and the curbing of the fall into the state of one vehicle one passenger, are what the people should ask for. Given our capabilities or the lack of them we would buy these as services from others. Where is the country to get the money it needs for them? Oil, oil, oil, everywhere and we might bathe and even swill in it, one hears the opponents sing.

Why should the people fight for chapter fuel to help Okadas, and the oku aparo cars that suck them dry? Why would they sustain danfos and molues that have become their nightmare? Surely, they know that both modes have choked cheaper transport to death. They shorten their travels by the day to drain the people of the little they have. They are all over the place blocking roads, and bringing markets to the highways. See what they have done to Oshodi over-pass (over Agege Motor Road) and weep for insanity. Because they block the roads, they stay longer in traffic. They belch the fumes that pollute the air. And everyone spends more money on health, fuel and maintenance.

Clearly, the fight ought to be to ease the people's burden. That burden would remain if the price of petrol were reduced to zero at the pump. The okadas, danfos and molues would block the roads even more. They won't give the U-turn under the Oshodi over-pass back to the people. Controls could change that. But would the authorities come up with them and could they enforce them? The burden won't lift until we have mass transit system. And you cannot have mass transit with mass vehicles of the mini type without a huge price to pay. They clog up the roads; reduce the man-hours for the economy, and set the people on the way to poverty and poor health.

Governments can do much for their people. But none in human history ever did all that their people wanted. People learn to choose the right priorities. And rulers find a way to know of those priorities. Then, as an act of faith, they make the people glad by giving them that, which they wanted. That has to be the measure of good governance.

October 2001