Subsidy: Why World Bank Recommended Economic Policies Consistently Failed In Nigeria For 40 Years – MFC To Tinubu
The Movement for Fundamental Change (MFC) has reacted to the ongoing implementation of petrol subsidy removal, which has led to increase in pump price of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), and leading to increment in the prices of essential goods and services, telling President Bola Tinubu that all world bank recommended politicies to Nigeria have all failed consistently in the last forty years.
A statement jointly signed by the Chairman of MFC, Oloye Adegboyega Adeniji and the group’s Senior Analyst, Alhamdu Ayuba, was titled “Alhaji Bola Tinubu, World BANK And Subsidy Removal”.
The group maintained that the level of mass poverty in Nigeria has been made worse since the recent increment in fuel prices.
Lampooning the World Bank, the MFC decried the absence of “home-made economic plan” as the bane of Nigerian economy.
The group noted that such home-made economic policies were seen during the regime of late General Sani Abacha, “under the leadership of Prof. Sam Aluko,” to have “showed much better results than all the inappropriate World Bank recommendations since the last forty years.”
The statement noted that “Fuel subsidy removal and other World Bank programs and recommendations to Nigeria have all failed consistently as we predicted.
“These neo-liberal postulations of World Bank are inconsistent with our social-democratic culture and developmental agenda.
“In December 2016, Vice-President Osinbajo said, “The downstream sector has been deregulated with the elimination of petroleum subsidy. This policy has removed from government, a burden of not less than N15,4bn monthly”.
“Now, why did World Bank come back again to the same “remove fuel subsidy’ chorus?
“It seems the World Bank misunderstands the hyper-inflationary impact of increasing the price of imported fuel.
“Apparently, lazy World Bank “researchers” simply copy generic neo-liberal templates
and recommend them inappropriately to Nigeria, without a good understanding of our socio-economic challenges”, the group lambasted the World Bank.
The group added that “the World Bank correctly identified the problem as corruption in the government, which according to the same World Bank includes subsidized imported petroleum products out of Nigeria.
“Logicaly, the World Bank should recommend that we address the issue of massive corruption that it identified correctly, but the World Bank jumped to its pre-determined neo-liberal conclusion that is clearly catastrophic.
“Fuel price has been increased over twenty times from 8k/l in 1973 to date. By 1983, it was 20k/.
“By 1993 it was N3.25. By 2003 it was N42, all the way to ~ N570/1 presently
with catastrophic consequences.
“Why are lazy World Bank researchers repeating a
remedy that has consistently failed over ten times?
“We challenge the World Bank to a debate on this. With the level of mass poverty in Nigeria, this increase in fuel price has made our situation even worse.
“Macro-economic instability, inflation, unemployment, poverty, disease and insecurity are all increasing. The Naira is further devalued.
“The permanent solution to the fuel subsidy situation is simple and has been known
since the Alhaji Shagari administration.
“We must stop the wasteful importation of expensive petroleum products by increasing domestic refining capacity.
“To increase domestic refiping capacity is simple. We merely maintain and upgrade the existing refineries and|build more public or private refineries”, the group insisted.
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