NIGERIA AND THE TRIUMPH OF POLITICS

The Managing Director of Julius Berger Nigeria Limited, Detlev Lubasach, said that Nigeria’s current financial struggles may lead to massive job cuts in the country's construction sector.

He also said that on the account of huge debts owed his company and other construction firms in the country, construction companies in the country may have to resort to staff downsizing to stay afloat.

Now, there are several bad news in this revelation that are worse than the imminent job cuts. With 35,000 kilometres of federal roads alone in the country, Nigeria should actually be a huge construction yard since about 40% of these roads are in terrible shape, while 7-70% requires constant maintenance due to heavy traffic.

Apart from these, the ripple effect of a construction projects goes far beyond salary of workers. From materials suppliers, to food vendors, artisans like iron benders, carpenters, manual labor, etc ,  the livelihood in host communities often increase during any construction work.

Today almost all federal contractors are not on site because of lack of funding for the payment certificates they have raised. Even intervention agencies like NDDC are funded in pittance and even the little might be the eye of a needle now that we have TSA in place.

I sincerely empathise with the Buhari government as they came into power and met oil at an almost all time low, a price we have to pay by turning a regional product into a single national commodity.

But I think the bigger problem we face in this country is the influence of politics in every policy being formulated. The politics of looking good, the politics of remaining in power, the politics of gallery playing.

Isn’t it ironical that a country with huge financial challenges should have almost 500 billion naira and release it to marketers for petrol subsidy while the road construction industry is comatose.

While the government knows the truth that subsidy of petrol should go, the government doesn’t want to look funny after most of their prominent figures vehemently opposed the last attempt by the Jonathan government.

The truth is that the 431 billion for subsidy is a waste. How do I know this? Because you spend more petrol in your car when you drive on a bad road than when you drive on a good road since lower gears consume more petrol than speed gears.

So whatever subsidy that government is trying to effect for the masses is actually wiped away by the fact that the masses now have to buy double the amount of petrol required. So at the end, the only beneficiaries of the petrol subsidy are the marketers and never the masses.

A clear example is Port Harcourt – Bayelsa through the East West road. This journey that took one hour thirty minutes a few years back has been reduced to forty minutes because part subsidy was removed and the balance was used in SURE-P to fund that project. By reducing the road trip by almost 75% there is a corresponding savings in volume of petrol utilised which translates to savings in cash.

Before the election, some prominent persons in the APC made some puzzling analyses insinuating that there was nothing like subsidy and it was just a means of the previous government stealing money. I actually waited tentatively for this burble to burst, but I was disappointed when I learnt that the accountant general released 431 billion last week for subsidies.

The root of every problem facing this country is politics. Dr Pat Utomi​ once referred to the Nigerian situation as a ‘triumph of politics’. If we can drop politics for a moment, I think the whole country will agree that the subsidy regime is the biggest waste in this country.

May God bless Nigeria.
Written by Ken Afala.