Opinion: Why Nigerians don’t deserve hike in petrol price

By High Chief Kehinde Kalejaiye

In Nigeria, poverty is attaining an alarming proportion with large chunk of Nigerians living below poverty level.

There has been an increase in the number of beggars on the street most of whom are the elderly, undergraduates and skilled workers such as Vulcanizers, Welders, Tailors and other artisans.

What about young Nigerian graduates who roam the streets for lack of employment and ended up begging in commercial buses and at bus stops across the state?

The sight of this category of Nigerians makes my heart bleeds. Why is the Nigerian government wasting away the future of her youths?

Why are our leaders deliberately turning the country to a breeding ground for crimes and illegalities?

Nigerian youths lazy around not by their making, government anti-people policies which are not supportive of their progress made it seem so.
There is hardship in the country and poverty is assuming an alarming rate. Prices of commodities are increasing day after day while salary and wages remain stagnant and unpaid for several months.

Nigerians are crying of hunger. Our children are out of schools and those that are fortunate to weather the storm of acquiring western education end up not making meaningful living out of such knowledge.

Our youths are unemployed. They are aging without any meaningful substance to their lives yet we transit successfully from one administration to another in every four years.

While Nigerians groan under the prices of food and commodities, hike in transportation fares and the harsh realities of the private and public property that were destroyed by hoodlums in the hijacked #EndSARS protest, the best President Muhammadu Buhari could do to assuage our pains is to increase the pump price of petrol from N155 per litre to N170.

Between 2015 and 2020, the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has increased pump price of petrol five times with 100 per cent increase in electricity tariff.

In May 2016, the price of petrol was N87 and it was increased to N145 per litre. Similarly, in March 2020 it sold for N145 but was reduced to N125 per litre.

But the reduction was readjusted within a month as in April 2020 the price was changed from N125 to between N121.50 to N123.50 and within few months, it increased to N155.
With an increasing unemployment rate of 27.1 per cent and foreign exchange rate of N480 to a dollar, President Buhari’s administration has once again increase the price of petroleum to N170.

Why is the country’s political class insensitive to the plights of the masses?
Why do they derive pleasure in inflicting aches and pains to the distressed physiology of the populace?

To eat a meal in a day, for an average Nigerian is a daunting task not to talk of the challenges of sheltering and other needs.

But this is not the case with the country’s elected officers and legislators who in spite of their monthly jumbo pay, have access to free accommodation, cars, meals and medical care.

Politicians eat to stupor forgetting the electorate who voted them into power. They are bent on eating the future of Nigerians yet unborn and stealing our common wealth for their future generation.

This is not what we voted for in 2015. Nigerians voted for positive change in their economic and socio-political affairs.

We voted for positive transformation and not retrogression and economic stagnation, poverty, political upheaval and repression.
Our country has all it takes to see to the need of the citizenry but embezzlement, mismanagement and corruption won’t allow it.

Our body and soul is yearning for a positive change. Nigerians are dying. We want a better bargain. We want good and well equipped hospitals, good roads, affordable housing and many more.

All these are achievable if we have committed and responsible elected public officers.

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