ABIOLA JP “Akanji”

WE COULD HAVE BEEN SENEGAL TOO Shall I Begin? The night before the dawn of 2022, Nigeria had already written her own obituary - the budget told the ugly truth our rulers were too shy to admit. Nigeria initially budgeted for N443 Billion for fuel subsidy payment. Before the year shut its eyes, the government returned seeking an additional N4.39 Trillion Naira. Ten billion dollars. For appropriate context: The entire national budget for year 2022 under review was N17.3 Trillion. A staggering N4.39 Trillion of that was budgeted just for an unproductive, wasteful and retrogressive subsidy regime. Approximately 20% of our national budget squandered just to sustain an expensive lie of a cheap fuel to earn the applause of a largely ignorant population. For a more effective context and this is where it gets interesting or should I say annoying: The budgetary allocation for: Health - N711B Education - N1.3T Infrastructure (Transport, Works, Power, etc) - 1.45T Housing - N500B COMBINED - N3.97T But Fuel Subsidy alone was N4.39 Trillion - Far higher than the 4 most critical sectors of the economy combined. The rot was more expensive than the remedy. The poison was better funded than the cure. Generation after generation, we fed the trap and called it governance. By 2023, the calculations had grown obscene. N18.4 Billion per day. Not for teachers. Not for surgeons. Not for asphalt or electricity or the crying farmer under a failed irrigation system. Just - fuel subsidy. Every single day. Madness. No wonder our Universities were poorly funded and went on strike for a cumulative 59 Months between 1999 - 2023. No wonder our infrastructure decayed without renovations and reinvestment and no federal road was motorable. No wonder our hospitals became glorified mortuaries due to poor funding and inadequate investment. No wonder km long fuel queues consistently plagued us. No wonder State governors became professional beggars going bowls in hand to the Villa for bail outs just to meet salary obligations. No wonder that even at the height of our oil prosperity, we still couldn't record formidable achievements. Until a true leader emerged and did what cowards catalogue as impossible. He took the bull by the horns - bare-handed, in broad daylight, before a nation that had mistaken poison for provision. He damned the consequences. Risked the applause. Staked his re-election on an altar and courageously pulled the trigger. He removed the subsidy. And with that singular, seismic, long-overdue act - he did not just balance a budget. He lanced a boil that had been festering for four decades. He healed the nation of its fastest-spreading cancer, even as the patient screamed that the surgery was the disease. Without that decision, Nigeria today would not merely be struggling. Nigeria would be a cautionary tale that other cautionary tales whisper about - worse than Senegal. And yet - it was Senegal who got the young president. The photogenic revolutionary. The crowd's favourite. The one Twitter fell in love with. Good Evening Severally...

Governor Lucky was alive, hale and hearty when Dangote announced plans to open Nigeria's largest port on Olokola and Ogun Statebwas at the forefront. He didn't know he needed to make moves to attract investments since and he just woke up