By Amos Aar
As the effect of the astronomic increment in the price of petrol bites harder with unimaginable rising cost of living, a senior lecturer at the College of Education, Katsina-Ala, Benue State, Dear Dzenda, has advised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to reconsider the removal of subsidy but rather review the subsidy regime based on realistic statistics.
The academic, who spoke in an interview with some journalists, including National Record correspondent, in Makurdi, opined that the federal government should stop subsidy padding and block all leakages in Nigeria’s borders through which people smuggle petrol to sell to neighbouring countries and once those people are blocked, the huge subsidy expenditure would drop.
Dzenda, who argued that all countries subsidise one way or the other, asserted that even if Nigeria does not pay subsidy on fossil fuel, the country will pay subsidy in something else that consumes that fuel.
“All countries do that till today”, he emphasized.
The senior lecturer, who described Nigeria as a capitalist society where few people are very rich against the majority of the common people, averred that governance is supposed to be about the people hence government’s policies should be favourable to the people.
“A greater population of Nigerians live in the rural areas and therefore, policies that are being made should in one way or the other favour the masses and carry them along because they are majority”
Dzenda lamented that he now finds it very difficult to travel from Makurdi, Benue State capital, to his village within the state because he has to spend fifty thousand naira (N50,000) to fuel his car.
He said he supports subsidy but against corruption in the subsidy process, asserting that now that government has tested subsidy removal, it has brought to the fore the adverse or harsh effects on citizens.
“I’m not against subsidy but the padding of the subsidy. The biggest problem of fuel subsidy in Nigeria is corruption. We have experimented subsidy which is good and we have now seen the realities that are coming out. So, we should do a framework that will subsidize this product based on realistic statistics. Until we get the correct statistics of the fuel consumption, we should now continue to check, through careful statistics to know the exact population of Nigeria, the population of vehicles and the exact quantity we are consuming”, he counselled.
Dzenda further advised that palliative measures should be put in place by the federal government in the form of a controlled transport system so that people will not be charging transportation randomly.
He also cautioned that salary increase is not the best option in an attempt to cushion the effect of subsidy removal on civil servants, predicting that it will only cause inflation. Instead of increasing salaries, he said the price of fuel should be reduced to make cost of living affordable for all.
“If you say you will add people’s salaries, that is not bad. But I am afraid that may even cause inflation. So, the best thing is to reduce the cost of fuel and don’t increase salary. If you reduce fuel to let’s say N60 per litre, I don’t need additional money again because my salary will take care of everything”.
Asked what would be his reaction to one month salary which Governor Hyacinth Alia of Benue State who promised civil servants four months payment during his inauguration on May 29 but could not pay every worker at once, Dzenda said it would have been better to wait and pay salaries at once because there is payday everywhere in the world and already, Benue people have learnt to be patient.
The issue of salary is a very key thing especially in our state here which is a civil service state. We that are living in the urban areas are strictly civil servants.
“Some people have collected salaries, some people are yet to collect. There should be a framework that the salaries should be paid at once to everybody.
“If I were the governor, I would wait because I was told that maybe, they are still waiting for this month’s subvention before they will pay the remaining Civil servants. The other one was paid through IGR. So if I were the governor, I would wait so that tension will not be high and this issue of traffic salary will be avoided.
“Salaries are not paid like that. Everywhere in the world there’s payday and that payday, everybody gets a pay.
“I’m not assessing the Government but that’s my advice. We have learnt to be patient. Next time, they should pay at once so that civil servants will be at the same level and let us have a payday in our state also. If they say on the 25th, on that 25th, everybody gets their salary”, Dzenda advised Alia’s government.
