Monday, January 9, 2012

'I for like this subsidy something o!' Osisiye Tafa

You know, increase the price of every. At least, all countries on the road to development experienced one austerity measure or the other. D’you know at a point, it was illegal to smoke foreign cigarettes in South Korea? Ref: Ha Joon-Chang’s ‘The Bad Samaritans’. Anyways, deregulate the sector! Let the Chinese firms see profitability in our fuel prices and come... sink a refinery or two. Let our billionaires (the listed and unlisted ones) sink refineries two-a-piece. Let there be positive competition on the price of PMS, twenty three naira here...twenty five naira there. Then the government with the flush funds would build roads-seven-lane roads with railways in the middle. And people of other nations shall proclaim ‘How vain the Nigerians are, that they construct such wide, many-lane roads...’ That’s the big picture ba? I can picture Jona smiling. Well, it won’t work sire!

See, development for any laudable goal (even if na to make all of us enter heaven) should never be transferred wholly to the citizen’s shoulder. Then for what purpose does the government exist? Using the present minimum wage and transport prices, I constructed the monthly expenditure for a worker who lives in my part of town (Magodo) and works in Ikoyi. For the arithmetically challenged, Fear Not! This one’s quite pedestrian.

Bike from Magodo to Berger N150

BRT from Berger to CMS N150 (for now o!)

Bike from CMS to any location in Ikoyi N150 (average) (for now o!)

Total N450 X 2 (being cost for To and Fro) N900

Weekly Transport Cost-N4, 500




Monthly Transport Cost-N18, 000 (Eighteen thousand naira ONLY)

As my Yoruba brothers will say, owo ti tan! (Money has finished)

Without calculating the cost of feeding, school fees for kids, vigilante dues, borehole maintenance and the infrequent bottle of beer...THE MONEY HAS FINISHED!

Again, this ‘Austerity For the Masses Only’ won’t fly. While one man allocates one hundred and thirty one thousand, five hundred and six naira eighty five kobo for his newspaper everyday, three million naira for his chop everyday; this selfsame person expects us by reason of an uncharismatic presence and wobbly speeches to make sacrifices and spending cuts, Please grab a placard sister!


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