Someone recently sent me a video clip through WhatsApp. It showed people, Nigerians in fact, scrambling for foodstuffs, ‘donated’ by the federal government. The young and the old, men and women, falling on each other as they struggled to grab a bag of rice or corn or a bottle of cooking oil. An old woman, legs too weak to support her weight, fell and was almost killed in the crush. A second footage showed a local APC partisan raining blows on the head of a hapless commissioner of Ondo state government who was supervising the sharing of palliatives in Akoko Northwest local government council area. The assault, which left her head bloodied, happened on a Sunday. Reacting a day later, the APC chairman in the council area said the assaulter/assailant had been suspended. He said “We don’t tolerate indiscipline in our party.” There have been many similar egregious palliative incidents across the country.
The palliatives are the government’s idea to soothe the pain of its decision to stop ‘wasting’ any more money on subsidizing the pump price of petrol. Subsidy abolition makes sound economic sense in that the subsidy, while it lasted, hardly reached the very poor of the poor for whom it was intended. But socially, the decision is a potential time-bomb. This is how the palliative initiative is packaged: the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) will get N5 billion each. Fifty two percent will be a straight grant and 42% a loan to be repaid in 20 months. All of this, of course, is optional, meaning the ‘offer’ may be taken up or rejected. No state, so far, has said no. Some governors, though, are cynical even after accepting the bailout. Edo governor Godwin Obaseki, ever the political gadfly of Abuja, has dismissed the palliative concept as “fraudulent” and “deceitful”. He said his government, on its own, would take measures to “support” Edo people. According to him, he was “shocked (by) and scared” of the federal government’s inability to plan and effectively respond to the fuel subsidy removal that has further impoverished Nigerians.
Ignore, if you like, Obaseki’s personal problem with his former party but not the fact that palliatives came as an afterthought. They were introduced after labour (represented by NLC and TUC) threatened to shut down the nation after the subsidy removal announcement. And because they are not preplanned, there is everything wrong about them. Perhaps, we shouldn’t blame this government of President Tinubu too much because it didn’t remove the subsidy; its immediate predecessor did. But Tinubu faltered when he failed to review that policy. Why didn’t he? Because his government presumed too much on Nigerians’ legendary patience. But labour showed that presumption is always wrong and comes at a cost. It is the strike sword still dangling over the government’s head.
If the palliatives had been worked out along with the plan to remove the petrol subsidy, the government would have known that N5bn would just be a pebble dropped in a sea of hundreds of billions of poor Nigerians. It would not stir much ripple. Any wonder then that the palliatives left people bloodying each other! Another problem is corruption. As lean as the supplies are, government officials supervising the sharing are helping themselves to them, denying the poor ones for whom they are meant. Some of the foodstuffs, mattresses and blankets find their way back to the open market from where they were purchased. Which is no surprise. It happened during the Covid-19 palliative deliveries, which were well structured and supervised by a presidential task force. As it happened, a good number of beneficiaries were not the ‘right’ people. One more problem is a lack of liaison between the federal and state governments. The states were simply commanded to take a bailout from Abuja or leave it. Of course, they took it because their finances are too low to leave them any option.
Another flaw is that the bailout came not with clear-cut instructions regarding the distribution of the palliatives. Again, the state governments were left to their own devices. While some have gone ahead to share them out to whomever they so chose, others have preferred to warehouse them. These latter have not learned the lesson of the mass looting of palliatives during the anti SARS protests in October 2020. Many hungry young people were shot dead trying to steal food to eat to stay alive!
Let’s go back to the point I made earlier on. The lack of consultation between the centre and states. If there had been one, the states would have been required to part-fund the palliatives. This is standard global practice. The idea is to make you commit more to the project in which you’re a financial partner. A bailout, which is what government has rightly dubbed the money it has dashed the states, will simply come in through one window and walk out another. This is what is happening. Without the states adding to what the federal government has given, there is not enough to go round. The result is people coming to blows and destroying the palliatives in the process. In the end, what they see is not palliative but the pallor of palliatives. The colour of death.
