Since President Bola Tinubu declared the termination of the subsidies, some 120 civil society organisations have set Monday, June 12, as a day of protest against petrol price increases and fraud involving fuel subsidies.
The organisation claimed to have personally witnessed the pain and mayhem brought on by the shifting of the cost and weight of the fictitious subsidy scheme for ordinary Nigerians.
“The coalition directed all of its affiliates, allies and stakeholders in the 36 states and Abuja to jointly mobilise for the June 12 Citizens Mass Protests and to engage in dynamic protest actions and demonstrations, during their June 12 commemorative events that are in line with their peculiar environment, to pressure the Tinubu government to end its imposed economic and political crisis in the country,” according to the coalition’s statement.
In a statement signed by the head of the National Coordinating Center’s secretariat, Olawale Okunniyi, the groups claimed that empirical evidence showed that the high cost of government and the privileges of certain elites in the country were primarily to blame for the difficulties in the Nigerian economy.
In order to prevent the subsidy cut from becoming yet another means of further crippling the nation’s economy and robbing the poor of their rights, the groups decided to organise and “lead the collective intervention,” according to Okunniyi.
Targeting only the gasoline subsidy is anti-people, he continued, adding that the leaders had unanimously decided at their conference to eliminate all “phantom handouts.”
“The coalition has decided to mobilise and lead the collective intervention of Nigerian citizens, youths, and the masses to ensure that the elite consensus to end the fictitious fuel subsidy in Nigeria does not become another opportunity for the state finance cartel to manipulate and exploit the subsidy removal policy, to further de-empower and pauperize the vulnerable and poor in Nigeria, in order to prevent driving the vast majority of Nigerians deeper into economic crises, crisis,
Given that the national elite appears to concur that the fraudulent fuel subsidy plan should be ended, it is obvious that all other subsidy systems in Nigeria share the same flaw of bad governance and public sector corruption. It is anti-human to choose to simply pay attention to fuel subsidies. All giveaways that are dishonest or fraudulent must stop.
The outfit, according to Okunniyi, will compile and raise citizen concerns about the $800 million World Bank loan that the Buhari administration has acquired and how it will be used. The organisation will also express worries about the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission Limited’s “remainder as an arm of government, and its genuine powers in the context of Petroleum Industry Act, PIA, its comprehensive execution, and the price of PMS in Nigeria.”
