AN end to the strike is long over due. It has taken this long to reach an agreement because government under-estimated the anger in the land, which it must have realised runs deeper than the increase in fuel price. Government needed to deal with that anger quickly instead of the various excuses that it is making about the increase.

Subsidy removal is a bold policy. The President deserves commendation for taking a bold stand where other governments avoided. However, reasons government gives for this policy portray it as weak, timid, unarticulated, and even uncertain about its proposals.

Throughout the strike, government was reacting to positions of opposition and civil society groups who appeared more at home with the issues. Government officials speak at cross-purposes. None of them had a full grasp of subsidy. The PDP government with a majority in the National Assembly could not agree on a position.

It says something about the suddenness of the policy and how unorganised government is. Ministers we never knew are telling tall tales of the gains of subsidy removal. Where have they been? Refineries will work soon, the rails are running, and roads neglected for years would be fixed. These sound great, but the people are still worried.

Subsidy removal is a hard sell any day. Government floundered by making minimal effort to gain the trust of the people. With its admission that corruption ruined petrol distribution and its refusal to punish established cases, government lost the moral ground to ask the people to pay more for fuel.

By asserting that the price increase was meant to fight corruption, government punished all, including the poor, who it claims it is protecting. Other faltering steps were conflicting figures on the cost of subsidy and narrow points about the poor not benefiting from subsidy.

Nigeria’s economy is too informal for such assertions. The afflicted middle class subsidises the rural economy with the billions sends to relations in the villages. Removal of subsidy will hurt the middle class and its ability to help the poor who government policies grossly ignore.

Without trust, the transformation government trumpets is impossible. Transformation is deeper than fixing infrastructure. It is a great idea that requires hard work and the buy in of the people who have to make more sacrifices.

The first transformation starts with government selling its policies. It made a mess of the subsidy policy through communication stance that portrayed defiance and a superior position over the people without who government acts in vain.

Nigerians have engaged a new gear in protests. They will use it more often if that is the only way government will listen – that too is transformation.