BY BEN NANAGHAN

ON October, 4, 2011, President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan sent the 2012-2015 medium-term Fiscal Framework (MTFF) and the 2012 Fiscal Strategy paper (FSP) to the Nigerian senate and intimated his plans to begin withdrawal of fuel subsidy with effect from the 2012 fiscal year-January 2012.

And since then, hell has been let loose on the Nigerian firmament. Some have threatened fire and brimstone, while others have prophesied the instant disintegration of Nigeria as a result of the imminent riots that will arise from the subsidy removal. Others including a former Nigerian head of state who was in the saddle for 11 years have called for an “Arab Spring” experience to flush away the Jonathan Government.

In the same vein, the president’s 7-year Single Term Tenure proposal even though very suitable and viable for Nigeria, was out rightly rejected by many Nigerians, many of whom did not consider the intellectually superior arguments in favour of the single-tenure proposal.

Why is the Nation enraged with its president? Is it that the president’s proposals are not well marketed professionally to convince the majority of Nigerians of their usefulness? Or are they not well packaged to include a broad-spectrum stakeholders position. Is it a problem of time-lag or time constraint?

President Jonathan knew ab initio that being Nigeria’s first minority president will create serious challenges and a great psychological warfare from those into whose psyche it has been pre-natally ingrained that leadership of this country is their fundamental birth right. The born-to-rule mentality is a fundamental and inalienable right to those who claim to own Nigeria.

Or is it not true that the founding father of Nigeria established Nigeria on the Wazobian tripod whose philosophy never expected that someone from an unknown Otueke village, from the smallest and least populated state of Nigeria would become the president of this great nation with a massive population of now 167million people.

And they raged and fretted and threatened that they would make Nigeria ungovernable if President Jonathan even won the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) primaries in January 13th 2011. And truly now, two legs of the tripod have ganged up against all the President stands for.

For the first time in the history of Nigerian politics, the West is teaming up with the North to neutralise a government in power. The former triple alliance has significantly wobbled to a dual entente as the south eastern states have found a common ally with the South-South States to pally with the President Jonathan government.

Between 1999 and 2007 the downstream sector was deregulated about ten times by the same president who deregulated petrol to 15 kobo in 1978. As at May 2007 Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) was N100.00 per litre before the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua slashed it to 65k on becoming President in 2007.

In Nigeria today, nobody is as well informed as President Jonathan. All information is made available to him before it seeps down the system. The Army, the State Security Service (SSS), the CBN Governor, the EFCC, the Statistician-General, Accountant-General, Federal Ministers, all bombard him with information. The President is like a mountaineer at the mountain top overlooking everything happening below.

Nigerians should for once trust their President and believe that he is taking them through the right path. This may not be the easiest and most comfortable path but a path that will surely lead us to economic freedom, in the long run. While very conscious of the very harsh effects of deregulation of the down stream sector, Nigerians must brace up for harsher times.

Did they not say that tough times don’t last but tough people do. Nigeria has for too long been ridden roughshod. The military did it from 1966 to 1999 and the 1999-2007 leadership also ruled with the mindset of a military general.

During this 1999-2007 period, Nigeria became a franchised country. Diesel was franchised to one individual who later became “MR DIESEL” who instantly became one of the richest in the list of forbes richest men in the world. At this period also, the Nigerian economy was wholly franchised to a single individual who was given the exclusive franchise to import cement, flour, salt, rice, sugar, indomie noodles at extraordinarily unattainable prices.

These vital and crucial food items now went beyond the reach of market forces and the masses as they came under a monopolistic market regime. For instance, in April 1999 when the late General Sani Abacha was in power, a bag of rice hovered between N1,500.00 – N1,800.00. But in the late 1999 after this monopolistic ‘deal’ was struck, a bag of rice galloped to N23,000.00 and by the year 2000, rice was selling for N7,500.00.

And this commodity merchant instantly became the wealthiest man in Nigeria, the wealthiest African, the wealthiest Blackman in the world and the 6th wealthiest human being in the entire universe even beating some of the most creative and ingenious billionaires of Europe and the Americas.

Mr. Nanaghan, a policy analyst, wrote from Lagos.