November 6, 2009
I was shocked by the news carried by one of the major daily newspapers that the Federal government was contemplating pegging the price of petrol at #105 per litre after its much talked about deregulation of the oil industry. This is wrong. Why peg the price of a product you want to deregulate? Government should let market forces dictate the price if they are serious of deregulating. Is the government afraid that the price of petrol may hit the roof after deregulation? This should not worry them. After all they did it with diesel oil and heaven did not fall. It is only the chicken hearted companies that could not afford the price of diesel that closed shop and turn tail to Ghana. Why should this bother the government? Did we die after they left? Good riddance to bad rubbish. Let them go, in fact they can all relocate to Ghana for all we care, we will still survive.
Did not the central bank governor assure us the price of petrol will only rice in the short run? The prices of other good and services may rise; we should not worry since it is in the short run. We should all bear the pain even if the cost of transport from Ikorodu to Ketu rises to #200 and look forward to the long time benefit of when the price of petrol will fall below #10 per litre. Have we not been assured by our indefatigable president that the price will definitely fall? We are all living witnesses to the free fall of GSM prices below #5 per minute. Why should we doubt the sincerity of a man who has done so much for the country that the first lady cannot bear the thought of his contemplating not running for a second term? What does it matter if the man falls down every hour in Aso rock? How could he even be thinking of not running for a second term when we are ready to give him what we denied Obasanjo? Who else can do what the president is doing for the country? Who could else have done what the president did in the Niger Delta without resorting to the Odi treatment?
Don't mind cynics like Okah who says the amnesty will fail. He is only jealous because he missed out in the deal of the century. Who else can give us a seven point agenda and start implementing them all at the same time? With our able president in the saddle, we should all go to sleep and leave him to pilot this great nation to the Promised Land.
One cynical fellow who does not know his right from his left said prices of goods and services will go up after deregulation and people may begin to die from the hardship that may be the fall out of deregulation. What a pessimist? Don't you watch NTA news? Even if that happens, is it not only in the short run? Anyway the population is too much. The country can do with a reduction in population. But for the bloated population, electricity would be steady by now. Look at Ghana; they generate only 3,000 megawatts of electricity while they needed only 2,000 megawatts while Nigeria generates less than 4,000 megawatts but needs about 18,000. But thank God by December electricity will be on for 24 hours all over the country courtesy of our hardworking president.
Back to the issue at hand, there is no room for price fixing in a deregulated economy. It is the market forces that determine the price. The government should not be afraid of the consequence of it action. It is for the good of the country. It is part of its delivering the dividend of democracy. The great NPN sorry PDP has achieved what other party before them including the military failed to achieve. There is peace in the Delta. Billions of Naira is being spent to transform the Delta to another Abuja. More money will flow into the treasury. This will translate to more money for our sagacious legislators for their constituency projects. Imagine a simultaneous development in all the federal constituencies in the country. We would not need to wait for 2020 before Nigeria overtakes even Japan in development that will make her the envy of the present developed countries of the world. Some hardliner says the money will end up in pocket of our legislators. I beg to disagree. They cannot embezzle the billions that will flow from the treasury to them. The little that will trickle from their table will be enough transform their constituencies to paradise. Even if they failed to deliver, seeing them in their new state of the art cars will be enough for us. In any case, too much development can put bad ideas into our heads. We might even begin to contemplate of changing the government through the ballot box just like some are clamouring for electoral reform. I wonder what they want electoral reform for when they have the perfect man in government house. What would then become of our president and his out of this world seven point agenda? We don't need a change of government at this time? Why should we change a winning team?
Some of our detractors say deregulation will worsen things because many companies are already closing shop and relocating to Ghana. I say let them go. Good riddance to bad rubbish. They are the unpatriotic ones. The ones that love us will stay. Even if all companies relocated to Ghana, deregulation must go on. Nothing should be allowed to slow down our wheel of progress. The vision our able president has for Nigeria must be allowed to come to pass. God bless our great nation and its good people.
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