Hon. Sokonte Huttin Davies represents Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency of Rivers State in the House of Representatives. In this interview with Sam Uwodi, he says removal of fuel subsidy is part of the transformation agenda of the Jonathan administration.
At the last Sunday emergency session of the House you were among those who spoke in favour of the removal of fuel subsidy. Why did you take that stand?
What I think is that for a long time, we have refused to face realities. Successive governments in this country made attempts to remove subsidy from petroleum. Go to other countries and you will see that they have since removed subsidies. The removal of fuel subsidy is a component part of the transformation means. To change things you need to do things differently to get better resulst. That is my understanding of transformation.
We are going to pass through difficult times. When you are sick and given injection, it is very painful, but later you will get well from your sickness through that injection and forget about the pain.
Some people are saying that the president did not give adequate information or education on the issue before he embarked on it. Let me say that, since last year, government has been talking about subsidy removal. I believe that those who are protesting are doing so because, in time past, government has not been straight forward. But, this one is different. I believe that this one will work.
Now that we have removed subsidy, we have heard that, in our neighboring countries, there are fuel crises, especially in Niger Republic. They have not been importing fuel. They have been getting in Nigeria and that has not been good to our economy.
Now that the subsidy has been removed, every person will buy his fuel in the open market. When the private sectors build refineries, everybody will sell at his or her own price and you will have choices to make. I have travelled overseas, and you will see filling stations selling at different prices. One may be selling higher than the other, so you have to choose which one you will buy from.
The argument against the present removal of fuel subsidy is the timing. People are saying it shouldn’t have come now that we have economic and security challenges. What is your take on this?
You see, government is multi-tasking. The dynamics of life are multiple. We allocate resources for various things at the same time. Can we say we should not pay workers salaries and spend all the money fighting Boko Haram and when we are satisfied that we have dealt with Boko Haram, then another Haram will arise from somewhere and we will shift there again. Then after that, we now say roads. No. That is not how government works. I am from the Niger Delta; when we had the challenges of the Niger Delta crisis. The leaders of the area came out and said we can’t continue to have this situation and went for solutions on how to solve it. Since the Boko Haram started, how many leaders from those areas have come out to condemn it openly? Instead, we see them being appeased so as not to aggravate the situation.
The Boko Haram people are not spirits. They are human beings. They are using the guerilla warfare tactics. The guerrilla warfare is usually very difficult to curb when the people of the community where they operate from agrees to their operations. The moment their surrounding environment did not agree with them, they will begin to expose them and they will be eliminated; but if their community agrees with what they are doing, that is why they can easily melt into the society when they carry out their operations. They are not spirits, but if we think they are, then let’s look for spiritists to come and deal with them. And the security people can’t do that alone, the highest security is you and I. The best defense we have in any place is the defense of the people. You must have heard of the civil war, why is it that Biafra failed? The reason is that, the Biafran troops succeeded in the Igbo speaking areas but when they came to the non-Igbo speaking areas, they couldn’t penetrate. The federal troops had upper hands and that was the end of the war. The moment an environment agrees with a crime, there is no way you can stop it.
But in other climes, you have mentioned where removal of fuel subsidy was carried, it was done with a human face?
I don’t know your own interpretation of human face. The government launched 300 buses…
People are saying these buses should have come before the removal of subsidy?
So people are angry because it didn’t come earlier. Let us not trivialize this issue. In December, Malaysia increased fuel price by 30 percent and nothing happened. There was no special announcement or palliatives; it was just announced.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
