B. J. Dudley in his 1975 inaugural lecture at the University of Ibadan addressed the subject of scepticism conceptualised as ‘an outlook which does not deny assent but withholds it until justification is given.’ Justification means the offering of reasons, in Wittengensteinian sense, appeal to an independent variable. The act of justification yields legitimacy. Therefore, to indulge in scepticism as theorised by Dudley is to ask questions.

I begin this instalment with a question. What is the matter with oil subsidy? Over the years, the removal of oil subsidy has acted as a justification for the increase in the prices of petroleum products in the country. The issue of subsidy removal has alternated with sheer price increase of petroleum products. One of the reasons given for price hike is the need to halt smuggling of petroleum products across the country’s borders, which requires price parity with non-producing countries.

Always, there has never been any adverting to the failure of state institutions, such as the customs, immigration, police and the military saddled with the collective responsibility of protecting the country’s borders. General Abacha came clear of any pretext and told Nigerians that he was hiking the price of petroleum products to generate income for the country that was dedicated to infrastructural development. This gave birth to the Petroleum Trust Fund (PTF) in those days when the refineries were not completely out for the count as they are today. Oil subsidy removal and price adjustment across a band is an orchestrated ambiguity that does not serve the interest of the country.

The country’s four refineries are not working and have been comatose for so long. Nevertheless, the workforce in the refineries are retained, while an import regime is intensely sustained to feed the venality of state actors and their proxies in the private sector who profit from the national tragedy for a country that was once the hope of the black race. The point must be made that the non-functionality of the refineries is symptomatic of state failure. The answer lies in political courage and clear vision of what is to be done.

By some estimate, government has spent about $26.5 billion on so-called Turn-Around Maintenance (TAM) enough to build a sizeable number of refineries weighted against the newly mint Dangote’s refinery built at the cost of $19 billion.

In 2012, I ran the subsidy probe report of the House of Representatives in The Constitution, a journal of Constitutional development which I edit. The report underscored the scam in the subsidy regime. The pitfalls of spontaneity in the President’s action on oil subsidy is not providing a plan B. As a matter of policy, shock absorbers in form of a functional refinery among others ought to have been laid out to relieve the pains of an already impoverished population reeling under multi-dimensional poverty. The shout of ‘Ebi n’pa wa’ (we are hungry) during his Christmas holiday in Lagos last December underlined the point being made.

Beyond past probes of the heist in the sector, oil subsidy has always been a mathematical fiction. When the new sheriff in town, Mr President, said handily “oil subsidy is gone”, he was addressing a fiction. The action meant abrupt increase in the prices of petroleum products that has cut to size the non-existing middle class, and immiserised the toiling masses of our people.

Was the president’s action not too impulsive without a plan B? The president must always worry about the legitimation of his action for regime survival. The Dangote’s refinery was the overarching rationale for the action of the Commander-in-Chief, even when the teething problem of actual commencement and the touted sale of the final products on an international price band has yet to be resolved.

However, the argument about an international price parity is outplayed by Olaseinde Arigbede’s formula that says, that a producer must first benefit from the outcome of his productive activity before seeking extra value in the market place. Arigbede articulated his formula in his essay titled, “Globalisation: The Myth that Rules and Ruins our Lives”, in question format as follows: “From our own experiences, if a farmer grows yams in abundance, his family must have the right to eat as much of yams as they may wish to without having to pay for this commodity, the same way the family of a farmer who does not produce yam must buy in the market. How come that we are forced to pay for those gifts that God blessed us with at home here as if we were strangers seeking to buy these things from our own government? Or what is all this about other peoples forcing our governments to remove what they call subsidy from all those services that our people need so badly and should have a right to?…What justice is there in asking that gifts of nature, like petrol, which we have in abundance, must cost the same here as it does in all other countries of the world whereas, the income of the worker here is about one hundredth of that of the worker in the U.S., for instance?”

It is to be noted that oil is the only linkage of Nigeria to the international political economy. In fixing the opaque in Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL), and the general rot in the oil sector, it appears that Mr President and his team have chosen the privatisation paradigm. It requires a caveat which is that the story of privatisation in Nigeria has not been a successful one even with few exceptions. Perhaps, the Nigeria LNG limited business model that appears to be working, could be emulated. But let end with a question. Will it work? Is the president listening?

To be continued