…policy makers may have gone mad
By Aniekan Udofia
The current fuel crisis in Nigeria has assumed a proportion never imagined in the history of Nigeria, borne out of one of the most reckless inauguration address, “Fuel subsidy is gone” by the President of the most populous black nation.
Not only has the price of Petroleum products skyrocketed, but the country’s currency has been floated against foreign currencies that the Naira is experiencing free fall in a magnitude that can sink a business in one day. The prices of goods and services have gone beyond the reach of the vast population and hunger rains on the roofs of households like the rising of the sun.
In the face of these difficulties, our policy makers justify the increase in pump price and the deregulation of the petroleum sector to meet the global market price. That the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, NNPCL can say that the price of the litre of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS is N2,000 on the global market, meaning that Nigerians should be happy to buy at less than that is the height of insensitivity and rascality from a regulator.
The global market for our policy makers has only been the standard of measurement when it comes to price fixing but not earnings for the workers in Nigeria. In a country where the president battled with the labour force to increase minimum wage to N70,000, an equivalent of $44 going by conservative exchange rate of N1,605 to $1, is the country prices should be based on global market.
The policy makers in creating price parity in the petroleum sector have totally ignored the earnings in the same global market, which is their standard of comparison. Sadly, in the same global market , on average, the workers in the United Kingdom earn £11.44 per hour wage, in Canada, $20.16 per hour wage, in the United States, $15.87 and in France €11.65.
Going by a conservative exchange rate of N2,097 to £1, N1,605 to $1, N1264 to $1 and N1,782 to €1, a worker in the UK earns eqivalent of N23,990. per hour wage and N191,917 for a day 8 hours job.
In the US, N25,471 per hour and N203,771 per day, in Canada, N25,482 per hour, and N203,858 per day and in France N20,760 per hour and N166,082 Just working standard 8 hours per day and 40 hours per week, someone in the following “global market” earns equivalent as follows per week and month:
UK- N959,585 per week and N3,838,340 per month.
US- N1,018,855 per week and N4,075,420 per month
Canada – N1,019 290 per week and N4,077,160
France- N830,410 per week and N3,321,640
Fortunately, in these “global market,” workers even have the opportunity to work double hours and double or triple their wages. It is not out of place to see a casual worker in the UK earn more than equivalent of N8m working a month.
It is this same global market that our policy makers in Nigeria reason that a worker earning equivalent of $44 minimum wage per month should compete in. It is the same global market that a man with N70,000 should buy at the same price with a man with a financial chest of over N5m a month.
Our policy makers may have lost it in their thinking and formulation or are totally insensitive to the plight of Nigerians. Never in the history of this nation have we had this level of policy summersault. From the financial regulator to the petroleum regulator, it is one policy nosedive to the other.
Nigeria is bleeding in hunger, and the rulers in their different capacities will further insult the sensitivity of Nigeria with careless utterances and policies. For the NNPCL to have compared the price of petroleum products in the global market with that of Nigeria is the stupidity of the height order. How long Nigerians will bear this pain is left unimagined.