By Kunle Olafioye
The Movement for Fundamental Change, a coalition of civil society groups in Nigeria, has called on the Federal Government to have a rethink on fuel subsidy removal and other World Bank programmes and recommendations, which it described as inconsistent with Nigeria’s social democratic culture and developmental agenda.
The group, in a statement signed by its Chairman, Oloye Adegboyega Adeniji and its Senior Analyst, Alhamdu Ayuba, said that the permanent solution is to stop the importation of petroleum products by increasing domestic refining capacity.
Describing the World Bank’s recommendations as neo-liberal postulations, MFC queried the rationale behind the recommendation for subsidy removal after the deregulation of the downstream sector by the immediate past administration. Quoting the former Vice President, Prof Yemi Osinbajo, MFC said: “The downstream sector has been deregulated with the elimination of petroleum subsidy. This policy has removed from government, burden of not less than N15.4 billion monthly.”
MFC wondered why the World Bank came back with the same recommendation, pointing out that “it seems the World Bank misunderstands the hyper-inflationary impact of increasing the price of imported fuel. Apparently, lazy World Bank researchers simply copy generic neo-liberal templates and recommend them inappropriately to Nigeria, without a good understanding of our social-economic challenges. “The home-made economic plan of Gen. Abacha era under the leadership of Prof Sam Alike showed much better results than all the inappropriate World Bank recommendations since the last 40 years.”
MFC, therefore, urged the Federal Government to embrace what it considered as a permanent solution.
“The permanent solution to the fuel subsidy situation is simple and has been known since the Alhaji Shagari administration. We must stop the wasteful importation of expensive petroleum products by increasing domestic refining capacity.
“To increase the domestic refining capacity is simple. We merely maintain and upgrade the existing refineries and build more public or private refineries,” the group suggested.