Our rights Column: January 20, 2004

January 20, 2004

The Fuel Tax Crisis

OurRights appears every Tuesday or Thursday in ThisDay newspaper.

Recently, President Olusegun Obasanjo in his infinite ‘wisdom’ and dogged determination to ‘reform’ Nigeria at all costs introduced the N1.50k tax per litre of petroleum products. The issue, which was initially mooted as a revenue item in his 2004 Budget proposal was unwittingly taken out of the ambit of the legislature’s deliberation. He has since commenced the implementation of the said fuel tax.

This unpopular policy has again pitched the President against the generality of the populace as demonstrated by the myriad of condemnations and calls for reversal that have greeted the implementation of the new tax; especially as same is coming at the heels of a recent hike in prices of petroleum products in the country. The House of Representatives have declared the fuel tax as illegal and called for a halt in its implementation. Likewise, the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had, a few days after the introduction of the new prices, given the Federal Government a 14-day ultimatum to revert back to N34 per litre agreement with labour or face a nation-wide strike action in protest against the illegal and unpatriotic price increment. The strike is scheduled to commence on January 21, 2004. President Obasanjo, in response, stressed his government’s readiness to ensure that peace, law and order prevail.

Several attempts to avert the impending crisis have failed to yield the desired results due to rigid posturing by the Presidency on the issue.

No doubt, the Nigerian masses have suffered enough economic hardships in the last five years without any reciprocal justifiable use of resources gained to government’s coffers by operators of government machinery. Increasingly, the Nigerian people do not feel obliged to keep making sacrifices in the face of apparent wasteful and ostentatious spending by government.

Indeed the need to avert the looming fuel debacle is urgent; government ought to concede to the popular demand in this situation. The federal executive should be sensitive to the plight of the masses and withdraw the fuel tax. Government rigid posturing and the consequent strike action will only lead to a collapse of socio-economic activities in the country and a devastating retrogression of the economy.

Again, the projected revenue accruable to the federal government from the fuel tax has been put at 17 billion naira this year; which sum is to be used for the maintenance and rehabilitation of federal roads. One cannot but query the federal executive rationale to implement this unpopular policy at such a huge sacrifice, particularly when viewed against the background that despite the 470 billion naira allocated to road maintenance in year 2003 budget, there is nothing to show for it in terms of improvement on the condition of our roads.

CRP therefore calls on the federal executive to withdraw the fuel tax and avert unnecessary tension in Nigeria.

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