Missing My Darling and Elders - By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde

This article represents my last word about the upcoming devaluation of the Naira, fuel price hike and other related issues. It started as a short response to a post that was sent to me by a reader on Whatsapp. I would not have revised it nor published it here on Facebook if not for the response I got from many in my age bracket who said it is the truth and speaks their minds. They understand from where I am coming. With this issue behind me now, I hope to address two others shortly: the pastoralists/farmers conflict that continue to claim lives and the delisting of IRK/CRK from our school certificate examinations.

Nigerians are indeed divided over fuel price hike. Many are for it, many are against it and many do not even understand what it is all about talk less of holding an opinion on it. The good thing about the saga is that it is distributive. NLC strike or not, we will collectively pay for the price or enjoy the benefits, supporters and opponents alike. In acca za ta sha rana, matankadin ma zai sha. Mark it: the outcome will not be neutral. It must either be a price to pay or a benefit to enjoy.

The Naira will soon be devalued, as hinted by Sahara Reporters, to N280 per dollar and VAT increased from 5% to 15%, in a country where corruption in public service is the endemic. IMF has demanded so as a condition to lending us its $3 billion. That is the same N280 figure that was used to arrive at N145/liter of petrol as contained in VP Osinbajo's contribution to the subsidy removal debate.

Hard working citizens will be robbed of their earnings and officials will continue with their usual theft and opulence. Our good Buhari cannot stop them. He must have realized that now. If he could, he would not have gone to the IMF. Recoveries would have been enough as earlier thought. The trial of Saraki alone is taking ages. It tells a lot about the weaknesses of our judicial system and the limitations of the President to fight corruption. The Senate, the resort of corrupt governors, will not change the rules to the detriment of its members. Sure.

More tax and inflation inducing measures like devaluation and hike in fuel price without any subsidy even in agriculture and in a corrupt country like Nigeria can only result in one thing: more poverty, beyond the present 70%. The present minimum wage of $90 per month will in the end be reduced to the value of $50 or less. But surely, there will be a lot of money raked from common citizens to finance the lavish lifestyle of the political class. As for the common man who is not enjoying any the minimum wage and not even a bag of fertilizer for his farm, his life will continue to be unbearable.

Poverty in turn discounts many things – like education – and breeds many ills, like crime and the insurgency that we are just coming out from. And write it: As many have observed already, this will not be the last hike in fuel price in Nigerian history. The Naira will continue to fall and the need for an upward review of fuel price will one day resume. It has happened many times in the past 42 years. The old gramophone plate of benefiting masses will be played again.

So in the end, one wonders who actually benefits from these measures. We are just banking on promises, hopes and expectations – that the President will deliver, that the marketers and bankers will play by the rules. With the corrupt officials and politicians in situ, one must learn to be cautious in surrendering his hopes.

Meanwhile, let us take our bearings from the mood of the marketers, whose renowned member, the Minister of State, directs policy matters on petroleum today. The marketers are happy like never before. However, if you see hyenas rejoicing, be rest assured that the sheep is in trouble.

The issue here is not Buhari the person at all. None of us doubts his honesty and dedication. If we will be fair to him – and we must, as our President – we must say that he has severally bared his honest mind on devaluation of the Naira and fuel price hike, both before and after his election. He repeatedly said devaluation was done before but to no benefit. Fuel price hike, he said, will trigger many negative effects in the economy and the lives of the common man. He has remained for the common good. Deep in his heart, I can swear, nothing has changed. We are on the same page of sadness with him on this. So Buhari the person is not the issue.

The issue is the forces that pestered him to make him let go. Led by the IMF and its local agents, these pests have endlessly said that devaluation is good for the economy even when their expert colleagues argue to the contrary for a non-industrialized economy like ours. Increase fuel price and it will be available, said every oil marketer – including Kachikwu. What else do you expect when an important ministry like petroleum is run by a marketer? All he knows is profit for him and his colleagues. His mind and that of the President are on different pages of the book. Then came the governors. The best way is to devalue the Naira such that we can get more Naira to spend on projects, they insisted. The truth is they need more to steal. Their kleptomaniac fingers are itching. Gaskiyar magana ke nan. They too are different from the lonely President. Already, some owe their workers the salaries of several months under different pretexts. Da farawa, da iyawa.

Ba raba ɗaya biyu. Surely, the proceeds from the devaluation or hike in fuel price will increase the quantity of Naira to be distributed every month from the federation account. The governors will corner both state and local government allocations. And you know what the fate of that money would be. When the going was good in the oil market under Jonathan, we had a governor that was stealing an average of N38 million daily as security vote throughout his eight years tenure. He squandered all SURE-P funds on so-called security and other routine expenditures, not on palliatives to cushion the effect of the N17 hike in price of petroleum. President Buhari also cannot stop any governor from doing so today, given the immunity clause. He does not have the powers. The worst he or any other President can do is to wait until the governor leaves office. Already, the behavior of many of the present governors in this regard is not reassuring at all.

As for the allocation of the Federal government, there will not be a PTF to effectively utilize the differential. The federal ministries and the ever-present civil servants will be dining over it. I once heard Buba Galadima asking what they did with the releases of third and fourth quarter of last year. I hope he got a satisfactory answer. The truth is that you cannot teach an old dog a new trick.

We are essentially dealing with the British theft-model of subjugation. It works by corruption and defending it through corrupt agents, officials and institutions. Do you wonder why most of our stolen money goes to the UK and it keeps it securely? The impatient French does the same but crudely. It is there enshrined in the terms on which they gave independence to their African colonies. All the national earnings of our Francophone brothers – except Guinea Conakry – are in the central bank in Paris and they cannot spend a penny or enter into any major contract with any other nation or company without its approval. Paris prints and determines their currency. It approves their budget, every year. To date, they continue to pay a levy to Paris for the civilization that the French claimed to have brought them.

In a nutshell, therefore, the issue is between our interest as Nigerians, on the one hand, and that of the same old West and our local corrupt elite, on the other. On the West, the dynamic will remain the same. I have never been comfortable with its romance with Buhari. Neither am I at ease with how its leaders praise him. In ka ga kura na yabon ɗan maraƙi, cinye shi za ta yi.

Put bluntly, IMF, World Bank, multinationals and the West generally will never be on our side. They depend on our resources to survive. Our economic relationship with the West has been in inverse form for the past 400 years. Every time our currency is devalued, our standard of living will fall while they increasingly become empowered. Every time a subsidy is withdrawn, we are adding to their competitive advantage. It means with the same dollars, they can get more of our resources and our sweat. On our part, it means that we have to work much harder – or give up more money - to buy the same quantity of the item we bought from them yesterday. The same slavery, if you like. Walter Rodney is dead. Yet, his thesis remains valid, regardless of the number of times Cameron receives Buhari.

May God have mercy on the darling of my heart, the Buhari of 1984-1985! He has gone with the times and will never return. I miss him, deeply. He was full of energy and stood against the West. He refused to devalue the Naira and was ingenious enough to get round the problem. The West and its stooges brought him down as they brought down Murtala when they could not bend him. I thought that Buhari was still around. Now I understand that he is no more. They and the circumstance have changed him with another. When they realized that they cannot prevent the trust that the common man has for the new Buhari, they courted him relentlessly. They have now come forward to use his position to achieve what they could not achieve even under Abacha, Obasanjo, Umaru or Jonathan.

May God come to the aid of the new Buhari! He has found himself amidst APC wolves and the corrupt politicians. He does not have the free hand of the military leader of the past. He is alone, without an Idiagbon by his side or a Sani Sami governing the states. These wolves, as reported, surrounded him and pressed him into conceding to increase in fuel price, devaluation of the Naira and other measures that are stifling to the life of the common man. He ran and ran from such a day, but he could not run forever. No excuses now, though. As President, he knows, he must shoulder the ultimate responsibility of his government. May God forgive him, strengthen him with His spirit and be with him all through these trying times as our President.

Let me confess that I have never been a communist all my life. I belonged to the MSS side on campus. Yet, at no time than now have I felt the absence from our midst of people like Malam Aminu Kano, General Murtala Muhammed, Dr. Yusuf Bala Usman, Dr. Bala Muhammed, Dr, Tai Solarin and Gani Fawehinmi. May their souls continue to live in peace! Their strong pro-people voices would have helped to counterbalance those of our neo-liberals today. The President would not have been alone either. In their presence, this little piece would have been unnecessary. Adieu. Adieu. I miss you.

As days pass by, my mourning on these measures will end too. They have to. I, like any other Nigerian, must embrace the new reality and make the best of it, hoping too that the future will defy tradition and become brighter than the past. The only solution to the situation is not agony but hard work to meet the challenge of our economic reality. We shall continue to do that forever.

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