A fuel pump (stock photo).
Emergency & Risk Alert Initiative (ERAI), a non-governmental Humanitarian and development organization has warned the government of Nigeria of the consequences of hike in Electricity Tariff and price of Premium Motor Spirit also known as petrol.
In a statement signed by its Executive Director, Gbenro Olajuyigbe, the organization whose vision is a world where everyone takes informed and appropriate action to reduce vulnerability and prepare for emergencies condemned the nonchalant attitude of the government and its agencies in respect of the price hike. It posited that the increment will deepen poverty, widen inequality and heighten crimes and violence.
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The organization whose priority is to support all processes that keep people safe, secure and resilient in a just society bemoaned the not thoughtful increase in tariff of electricity and price of premium motor spirit or petro in the contexts of economically devastating global COVID-19 Pandemic that has severely, negatively socially and economically impacted Nigerians and businesses without appreciable support for recovery from the government.
He declared that ‘Increase in Electricity Tariff will increase the Cost of Production of already ailing companies and make their products uncompetitive in the market, further harming the capacity for economic growth in the long run. Developing state like Nigeria that is desirous of growth and development needs to produce at a very low cost so as to compete with other states who have mastered the art of Ease of doing business at low cost.’
He said, ‘It is sad and unacceptable that after over five years in office with the campaign promise of building refineries, the government of an oil-producing and exporting state like Nigeria has neither build new one nor rejigged the existing ones in order to refine petrol. With this failure and by continually importing petrol, Nigeria government has kept on exporting jobs to other countries thereby exacerbating unemployment rate at home.’ He declared that ‘In fact and indeed, what it calls removal of subsidy is the sheer transfer of the cost of own failure and irresponsibility’.
He noted that ‘more shameful is that the government kept on justifying the increase of fuel price by drawing price comparison from the U.S, Europe and other countries without corresponding reference to Per Capita Income, GDP, infrastructures, available options; including modes of transportation and diversities of such economies. Such face-saving data and comparison are misleading and disingenuous. They are too simplistic as Impacts vary. Development Economic Analysis is about vulnerability, about risk and risk reduction measures in place to address spiral effects of economic policies; more so in a monocultural economy like ours’.
Olajuyigbe asserted that nobody is safe under the cloud and regime of the high cost of living, low standard of living with mingling hyperinflation in a climate of recalcitrant unemployment and the frightening preponderance of poverty triggered violence and insecurity. He said in such an atmosphere, ‘the rich will mock the poor who are hungry at day time and the angry poor will mock the rich at night! That’s how society prepares crime’
Olajuyigbe advised that rather than afflict poor Nigerians further, the government should reduce the humongous cost of governance, address the issues of mind-boggling corruption and resource mismanagement that has trailed the government and its functionaries in the last few months. It is disheartening that rather than supporting vulnerable people and businesses of a country that is just emerging from exceptionally high risk and high impact health emergency like COVID-19, the Nigerian government has chosen to prioritize taxing and tasking people and businesses that have not functioned in the last five months.
Emergency & Risk Alert Initiative (ERAI) believes that increase in Electricity Tariff and the price of petrol will trigger cost of living, hurt businesses, deepen Poverty, widen Inequality, heighten crime, violence and abolish the constitutional expectation of security and welfare for which government is instituted to provide. We demand the immediate reversal of the hike!
Olajuyigbe Gbenro
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