Just as well, the Federal Government just withdrew its notice to exit petroleum subsidy. For the ruling order, that would have been a primer in wilful political suicide, on an election eve. The opposition would have grabbed that rare plum with divine thanks!
Yet, since that announcement, it’s been lamentations galore: how subsidy would stall the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).
The PIA, goes the jeremiad — drip! drip! — has no provisions for subsidy, as everything is “liberalized”. True.
But isn’t this some deja vu of some sort? Have we not witnessed all of this before?
In September 2004, President Olusegun Obasanjo blundered into the “government magic” (apologies to Fela) of liberalizing petroleum downstream by importation.
