By Favour Afolabi
Congrats to you Nigerians, the President has instructed “that you all visit any Fuel Station of your Choice from tomorrow morning; pick the nozzle from the dispenser, plug it into your car, fill the tank; and when you’re done bring out 3 Jerry cans from your booth, fill it up as well and drive away from the place; and please, don’t end there, call all your friends and direct them to do same as well.” This is all a part of “the dividends of Democracy under Buhari!”
Walahitallahi, I should have voted for this man rather than spend 12 years opposing him; I will now also expect to walk into GTBank tomorrow, walk up to Segun Agbaje and order him to move N100m into my account! LOL
When Buhari won the polls, the number one thing I spent weeks discussing on my wall in attempting to help him set an agenda for his government was “my call to him to announce he would be ending the Fuel Subsidy regime” – my logic was (and remains) – “You have the goodwill of the people to put an end to this madness” but his ‘religious worshippers’ said “Sai Baba has said there’s no such thing as Fuel Subsidies; PDP and GEJ were just using it to chop our monies; once Baba enters, the Marketers would behave because Buhari’s Body Language will cut them to size!”
Well, what do you have – our Buhari that said “there’s no such thing as Fuel Scarcity has now within months paid Billions of Naira in subsidy fees to these same Marketers” – and those same marketers are holding the nation to ransom again as they have always done – in the time past, when I wrote about this subject that I’m very passionate about, the overriding response was for our Intellectuals to say “PDP/GEJ is to blame; he should pay the Marketers rather than chop their monies; he should have refurbished the Refineries and saved us from this mess” – so what are those people saying today?
Do I need to bore you with stories of January 2012 ? The period that this same fuel crises was used to set the stage for “the final coup plot that was executed three years later versus GEJ” – at a time, the man was going to put an end to these shenanigans but those “who are now in government today” joined forces with the Unions, Marketers to frustrate that process going on to use this matter as well major campaign tool versus the man.
At the time, it was as if this present day won’t come, it was as if the seeds planted then won’t germinate – well, it has: the President’s Boys spent the very early parts of this administration selling lies that “The Refineries were now working at 60% Capacity due to Buhari’s Body Language” all in a bid to divert the public’s attention from this Fuel Subsidy saga – giving the people the impression that “soon, we would be able to refine all our consumption and end the subsidies regime” but a few weeks later, it became apparent “that the incumbent government was only ruling the nation with propaganda as its people did while in the opposition on the subject matter” – it came to light that “the refineries were only operating at 10%”
Fast forward to today, we are back again at this tortuous place of “No Fuel” – remember that last 2 weeks leading to Buhari’s inauguration? That harrowing weekend of no-light; no-fuel – which was caused by “Marketers waiting Buhari’s Policy on the Subsidy regime before they brought in Products?” Well, welcome home, again.
It is not too late for Buhari to “drop this his gragra 1983 moves” of “Order them to do this or that” except he’s going to now ‘Dasukilize’ the CEOS of these Marketer/Companies, he should put an end to this leech called “Fuel Subsidies” and have the Marketers use their own monies to bring in products and sell to the people; and if he wants to get rid of them, he can always get 10 Refineries built in 10 days – since he’s Body Language is capable of “doing anything he possibly imagines” in the Cartoon Networked-typed scenario.
Me, I will be resuming at the Mobil Station on Ahmadu Bello VI, which is close to my Office for my own dose of “Buhari Fuel” in the interim; pick your own spot; and please share the stories of the SLAPS you received in the process.
Favour can be contacted on Twitter via @favourafolabi
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