Date Published: 05/18/09
PRESS STATEMENT 17TH MAY 2009
REMOVAL OF FUEL SUBSIDY: CONGRATULATIONS NLC
NIGERIANS CANNOT PAY FOR GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION AND INEFFICIENCY
‘This system {deregulation} is not about bringing hardship on Nigerians. But the subsidy does not reach the people it is intended for. There is a very strong cartel that is benefiting. I do not believe deregulation will bring hardship to Nigerians. But it will change the greatest institutional corruption in the history of the nation.’
Conference of Nigeria Political Parties {CNPP} was outraged when President Umaru Musa Yaradua in his maiden press conference last week, in desperation was passing the buck of the gross inefficiency and monumental corruption going-on under his watch, to innocent and pauperized Nigerians; through removal of fuel subsidy.
Accordingly, CNPP congratulates the Nigeria Labour Congress {NLC}, Civil Society Organisations and other progressive forces for your patriotic agitation and successful mass action on the inglorious plan to burden Nigerians with double jeopardy hardship; consequent upon the gross inefficiency and monumental corruption of President Yaradua’s regime.
CNPP joins NLC in its position that,’ corruption is the reason for none functioning of our refineries, corruption is the reason for the importation of fuel and corruption is the reason for the high amount that government claims to be spending on subsidies.’
CNPP is worried that a go-slow government that does not even implement duly appropriated budget, is insisting on heavy taxation and anti-people macro-economic policies; at a time when the free market paradigm is collapsing and the world leading economies are stimulating their economy through new projects like building of new refineries.
In other words, we have not read of or witnessed any concrete plan of the government of President Yaradua to fix the existing four refineries nor construct even mini-refineries two years down the line, to stop the greatest institutional corruption in the history of the nation. There is also no record of any of the anti-graft agencies prosecuting those master minds of the greatest institutional corruption in the history of our dear nation.
We have thought that with the new helms men appointed by President Yaradua, now heading the oil industry, the monumental corruption and the leakages will be plugged. Rather what we see is a president fraternizing with the looters of our treasury at the expense of the majority of the citizenry.
The painful record we have is that the master minds of the greatest institutional corruption in Nigeria are the same people who bankrolled President Yaradua’s election and contributed significantly to some of the monies and vehicles President Yaradua declared in his Asset Declaration Form at the Code of Conduct Bureau. We stand to be contradicted.
CNPP is constrained to ask, why have President Yaradua been unable to fix the existing refineries? Or failed to recover monies paid for the repair of the refineries? For nobody can claim that the refineries are too old, as the longest serving Minister of Petroleum, Alhaji Rilwan Lukeman agreed that there are refineries which are more than 50 years old and producing.
CNPP research shows that in the event that Nigerians remain complacent and the subsidy is removed; the price of a litre of PMS will go up to N200, that of diesel and kerosene will also hit the roof and go hare-wire, as there is no concrete plan in place to moderate the price, since the government has stubbornly maintained that they cannot build new refineries or repair the old ones.
In other words Nigerians must wake up and join NLC,CSO and other progressives forces to stop the second slavery.
While we challenge the government to publish details of the over N650 billion expended as subsidy of fuel importation in 2008; we pledge our solidarity to the NLC, Civil Society Organsatons and other progressive forces for their perseverance and tenacity of purpose.
Consequently Nigerians cannot pay for the gross inefficiency and monumental corruption of President Yaradua regime.
Osita Okechukwu
National Publicity Secretary
CNPP
08039738870
