The Sunday address of President Bola Tinubu to the nation regarding the ongoing #EndBadGovernance protest has been politicised by the gladiators. If Tinubu had been less dramatic on his inauguration day and quietly allowed fuel subsidy to fade as was intended in the zero budgetary allocation by his predecessor, perhaps the dynamics of the unfortunate protests would have taken a different shape. The President is being put on the spot to offer temporary relief.
The option makes available cheap fossil fuels procured with huge debt financing that is certain to gulp more than 100 per cent of the nation’s treasury, including all projected revenues. Be that as it may, the silence of the state governors who have received the windfall, owing to the subsidy removal, should be of more concern to Nigerians. Lagosians for instance should be more interested in what their state governor says about land reforms, a lack of which is rendering millions of professionals in the built industry prostrate.
Also, the lack of potable water in most parts of Lagos has made the city a staccato of tunnelling boreholes in the 21st century. In the same vein, it may not be out of place to ask what Lagos State has done with one of the largest rice mills in Africa capable of employing almost all the hungry protesters who have taken to the streets. A state in the South-South region just spent N850bn on luxury cars, not minding the ravaging hunger putting the populace at their wits’ end.
Tinubu’s gift of e.