HAVING A BLONDE MOMENT WITH THE FUEL SUBSIDY ISSUE

My face says it all.

International Airport Transformed

First of all in no way do i mean to belittle what this issue has come to mean to Nigerians , the truth is whether we are For or Against the Fuel subsidy removal decision, this issue has become paramount in our nation and we feel very strongly about it, However i want to keep it 100% real the only way i know how to...lemme tell you two months ago when the argument on Fuel Subsidy started making the rounds in the media, i was extremely clueless about it.

When i first read that the Government was thinking about removing Subsidy i thought why?? i mean isn't that being a tad bit selfish? we have little or no power supply,no good roads, no free education,absolutely  nothing in terms of welfare for the Nigerian Citizens, to me the Government subsidizing the cost of importation of fuel was the only advantage we had as an oil producing nation so why on God's earth would the Government attempt to withdraw subsidy ....That was before i met a friend of mine who was close to a consultant knowledgeable in the importation process and he explained to me how a group of people were ripping off the Government and making millions from this policy, the procedure is that the Government pays a percentage of the cost of importation of fuel to the importer so that the price is reduced and affordable to the ordinary man, but in reality what happens is that prices are inflated,the  quantity of fuel imported by the importer  is exaggerated for obvious fraudulent reasons, people who own tank farms hike prices and in most cases some of  these imported fuel is also smuggled out of the country and still sold at the cost price even after the Government has paid the difference, ....so i thought to myself hmnn maybe removing this subsidy would not be a complete bad idea the first thought was that we should work on our refineries and make them 100% productive but that thought was soon filed under not in the next 50 years category , so  i figured out that with my in adequate managerial knowledge and next to zero knowledge of how the procedure of oil importation , transportation, marketing  and consumption is run in our polity , the geniuses in Government would come up with a fantastic solution to this problem, maybe a   long term plan of partial phasing out of the subsidy , whilst ensuring that these negative elements who hijacked an otherwise humanitarian gesture by the Government would be called to order, the entry barriers into that sector of the Economy would be improved so that more  competitors  would be active in that sector thereby eventually reducing the pump price of fuel, infrastructures such as providing alternative and effective transportation would be put to place to cushion the effect of the subsidy withdrawal by Government, i expected that the railway system would be restored , i expected that there would be adequate provision of highly efficient buses with subsidized cost of petrol to reduce the transport fares so that most people would take advantage of these and leave their private cars for emergencies or weekends thereby even reducing Traffic in the suburbs, i expected so much before the actual removal of subsidy in its entirety I expected my Government with its Committee of first class geniuses to come up with fantastic policies ....that didn't happen.

Broke and excited at the prospects of making it into 2012 with all my fingers complete i over hear whispers  that the President announced during a church service that  petrol subsidy has been withdrawn, to be honest it did not sink in then, i mean why should it, the Government had promised to wait till April, even though Provision for Subsidy was not contained in the 2012 budget i thought the Government was just bluffing, i thought eventually the Government's real strategy would manifest and we would witness removal of partial subsidy i had all sorts of thoughts (you must forgive those thoughts i recently changed my hair color to platinum blonde so i was a bit dumb in my thinking.....) the reality hit home when i drove my smallie car as i like to call it into a filling station and the metre hit N5000 and my fuel tank was still not full, later that day i was supposed to go the other side of Lagos because i was still dumbly convinced that the Government would reverse its position soon, i decided not to waste my fuel , i called my cab driver and the guy bluntly informed me that he was not leaving his house for anything less than N4,500 this was for a fare that i paid N1,800 previously and the cab driver thanked me like i was giving him a gift ..now he wanted me to pay N4,500 i began to fume.

Resuming at work  from the holidays the workplace was brewing with tension, people began to narrate their experiences, some people paid between N10,000 to N15,000 for a bus fare from the east to Lagos, people were stranded they could not come back to Lagos, they simply could not afford it, my friends who drove jeeps bought fuel for N7,000 and their Tank was not even near full ,This was no more funny what was happening... i began to see tweets from Pat Utomi calling for an urgent action, the Government had become Insensitive and we had to do something about it...He was the least likely public figure i expected to say anything on the matter but the man was speaking my mind, my mood went from troubled to extremely angry as a matter of fact i shut down , what's the point working anyway my cost of living just tripled , my employers did not pay me enough to sit here working my butt off when my mind was pondering  on how i was going to survive this year..and so it began...

I have listened to Labaran Maku, Diezani Madueke , Sanusi and Okonjo Iweala try to justify the act of the Government, Labaran Maku went further to agitate me even  by stating that there was a CABAL who had hijacked the subsidy money for their own personal pockets and the only way to correct this anomaly was to remove subsidy, President Goodluck Jonathan...My President the Ijaw lecturer who had no shoes as a child but rose to the highest office in the land went on to say that the situation was only temporary and Nigerians should endure...oh really sir , lets put the Pump Price of fuel rising from N65 to N141 over night in our long list of things to endure, right next to our brothers and sisters being slaughtered in the North for no just cause by an Islamist group called Boko Haram, Mr President let's not stop there let's include the cost of transportation of a colleague  coming to work from Abule Egba to Victoria Island  from about N300 to N800 in our Endure List , Lets not stop there let's explain to the Old man with two children from the east how the pocket money sent by his son a Driver in Lagos will reduce from N5,000 monthly to N5,000 every three months let's endure all that and maybe lets all change our middle name to Endurance and come together to sing songs in the Night...What are you thinking????????

As i sit here typing away in anger i am a bit ashamed..yes for 5 days non stop people from all works of Life , young and old have marched together from their respective states in what we have termed the #OccupyNigeria  movement, braving the scorching heat, the long miles, the fear of hoodlums, people all over Nigeria have come together to sing in one voice ...Enough is Enough but i am still ashamed.....Innocent Victims of Police brutality have lost their lives from Lagos to Kano from stray bullets, mothers have cried out, Fathers have cursed , young people have marched ...but i am still ashamed.........our citizens in the Diaspora from Ireland to America to London have all come out to show support , lending credence to the fact that Nigerians have Endured enough ..our Government have called us Hoodlums, jobless youths...rival political thugs.....Miscreants...little minded buffoons...ok i added the last phrase but do you blame me?/ unless how else will you explain how the Federal Government announcing that they will supply 1600 Buses as Palliatives for the Subsidy removal to a nation of about 150 million people if they do not perceive you as a Buffoon how else can you explain it. i sat down in anger as i was forced to watch NTA one night  listening  to Dieziani Madueke talk about how we should compare the pump price of our neighbours like Togo and Chad before complaining and i wondered if the Beautiful large eyed woman needed a pat on her back or some whisky to make her sit up and stop talking like she was addressing a bunch of kindergarten kids...last time i checked Togo, Chad, Tunisia were not the Largest Oil Producing Nation in Africa..but maybe i am wrong, after all i do not have a first Class degree in Economics or Business Administration, I have no experience in Governance as most of these respected people do so maybe what is happening is Mis communication as someone diplomatically put it, maybe i am not seeing what these geniuses are seeing but that does not change the fact that i am ashamed...I am ashamed that even in my clueless blonde moment and haphazard un intellectual form of expression I am still making more sense than the crop of geniuses we have running this Government...you must forgive me Mr President if this write up makes absolutely no sense to you..matter of fact just pin it up and put it in your Endurance List add it with the more than 100 million voices who share the same opinion. lets hope your Endurance list does not become so heavy for you that it pushes you out of office..lets hope so Mr President.