How Tinubu offended the rich among us, by Kayode Oyedeji

I sent him a report on current reforms and he requested for a meeting.

He roared ” what is good about these reforms?”

Before I could explain that the reforms have both merits and challenges, he started to share his experiences.

Before now, he told me, “I used to buy 10,000 Dollars BTA anytime we wanted to go and see animals in Kenya. We will sell about 70% at the Black Market. The proceeds of that alone would be sufficient to pay for our flight”.

He continued: “but now, 10,000 Dollars is a lot of money. Even if you are able to buy it, there is no arbitrage gain, the man turned everything upside down”. Economic sabotage has dragged on for too long in Nigeria.

At that point I knew where the shoe pinched. A big man living large on government Dollars. I didn’t bother to explain anything. I just sympathised with him. That was fake sympathy to allow him to excuse me from his travails.

My real sympathy remains with the ordinary people who are truly affected by these reforms, not fake big men who do little and earn big economic rent. They have to bear the brunt of years of economic indulgence and rape with men who have created fake fortune from our collective patrimony.

It is the same everywhere. A big man keeps several houses, one in Abuja, Lagos, his State Capital and his village just to show how big he is.

His electricity bill, before BAT came, was indirectly borne by the government. Now that cost reflective tariff is in place, he joins the very poor people who gained nothing from the government before to lament. He has to pay his bills. He is not interested in what becomes of the poor. He only assumes he deserves to live on Nigeria.

The rich, those reckless, ostentatious guys, are leading the “onslaught,” against the reforms. They pretend to be fighting for the ordinary man on the street. They are feeling the heat. It is a great thing to be rich and wealthy, but that must be achieved through industry, ingenuity and innovation, not by milking the system through unproductive and lopsided subsidies.

The reforms must be sustained. Let those larger than life individuals pay their bills.

Yes, we must also take the reforms further. As we work on the revenue side, we must reform the expenditure side so that these elements whose only “wealth well” is the public sector, can be curtailed from raping the economy through fake and inflated contracts, so that everyone can work for the lifestyle he or she desires.

It is true that times are hard. Government must continue to see how it can help the poor and the vulnerable by adopting some selective forms of subsidy, especially in education and health sectors. Such interventions can be by way of subsidising electricity or absorbing much of direct cost incurred by citizens, especially in rural areas

President Tinubu has started that by reducing the cost of dialysis by about 60%. He has also removed the cost of Cesarean Section from some selected hospitals. We can take it further by reducing the amount paid at any government hospital to almost nothing, if the Governors cooperate. There must be a way to help.

But for the big men, the ostentatious guys, the larger than life, they must pick their bills with grace and equanimity and stop calling the President names. They must pay to fuel their convoys, pay their many domestic aides from abroad, pay adequately for the expensive vacation of their large families and stop pretending to be fighting for the ordinary man on the street.