1st July, 2024
Your Excellency
The President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria
Aso Villa
Abuja.
Dear President Bola Ahmed Tinubu,
INTRODUCTION
The above subject matter refers.
The Commoners of Nigeria hereby write to present the factual reflections of the masses, the foot soldier electorate, otherwise known as the commoners; as against the artificially decorated reflections of the elites and the manipulative reports of the politicians over time.
We eventually came up with this all-encompassing communique as being gathered on daily basis from all centres and regions of our spread all over the country so as to give you the truest and firsthand information directly from the commoners which make about 68% of your citizenry, an average of 170 million population, if our prided, though unverified, population figure of 250 million is anything to go by. This statistic which is based on the average Nigerians living below poverty line and the vulnerable, could be read further about on Poverty in Nigeria Wikipedia, Nigeriastat.gov.ng and worldbank.org.
The communiqué shall be split into episodes of events so as to lessen the time your excellency would spend on each per time, as well as to allow capturing of more other ordeals or/and improvements as they may unfold from different strata and systems of the nation in the course of time.
As much as we could start to feel like you probably want to work your words and mantra of “e lo fokan bale” (just put your mind at rest) in the recent time, yet this salutary epistle will serve as guiding insights in all your endeavours to implement any plan of relief of any kind as we cannot continue to “fokan bale” until we all die of hunger and of these sundry give-one-take-ten-back bills, especially from merchants and billers like electricity distribution companies.
We have been watching with keen interest and dismay, the trend of things in this country with series of life suffocating inflations on virtually everything called products and services the commoners could at least enjoy for the token of their votes. We are not sorry to say that the President, the Senators, the house of Representative Members, Ministers, Governors, state house of assembly members and all political functionaries in Nigeria are insensitive to the pains of their subjects, the electorate that practically gave them different offices they are today, but rather biting the fingers that fed them. Remember the fingers you are biting today must have been wounded metaphorically beyond voting in the subsequent elections; commoners will rather prefer to appreciate with their votes whoever embrocates their bitten wounds!
For crying out loud, why can’t the politicians serve our cause for once instead of paying us back our votes with this excruciating phenomenons at all levels? Some of us voted under the intensely scorching sun and some others under the snowy downpour; yet, the coin we could be better paid back by our “servants” (the name they bear during electioneering) is hunger, insecurity, indiscriminate electricity hikes, political gratifications called palliatives (will be explained), etc.
We are forced to get this communiqué across to your excellency in an open letter as the last resort at our disposal, having had all other means defiled as only barking dogs by the powers that be at different levels. It would therefore confirm the negative axiom of the general public if this means is also ignored by your excellency and the commoners are eventually commonised unresponsively as usual. We pray that our case in Nigeria will not degenerate to that of Kenyan scenario; that is if commoners are not pushed to the walls with hunger and all other cruel instruments of hardships by the political elites!
Mr. President Sir, we cannot imagine if hell could be more excruciating or hotter than the present-day Nigeria. Likewise, we may not be talking out of context if we infer that the death tolls in Russia-Ukraine war for the past two years could be logically compared to those who are dying daily of hunger and unprecedented poverty in Nigeria, both physically and psychologically.
Now, the truth is that the commoners are getting wiser daily as politicians have taught us sense with hunger. We have discovered that politicians only pretend to have our votes during election; but now that commoners are coming together in a bond of unity, a countdown dashboard has been initiated for all the political grandeurs, waiting for their homecoming for votes from the supposed “muguns” (the “stupidest”) as usual, who had already been mesmerized with servile hunger.
We have discovered that an average politician will strategically plan to catch voters at their wit’s end every four year with starve-and-feed device. But this time around, ebi ti ko mekunnu logbon (commoners have been taught in a hard way by hunger), no such strategy will work again!
Your Excellency Mr. President, it can be unequivocally established that no one could be this favoured as you were in the last election; despite all the schemings of intra and inter political dissident power players, you still got your way to the throne at the order of God! A rare privilege and true divine MANDATE you’ve got indeed and not a MAN MADE! Think less of whatever mystical, esoteric, metaphysical or supersensual power of any kind in force, if not God, it couldn’t have happened!
Perhaps, God thoughtfully sought you out as a supposed capable hand like he did to the biblical Moses when he (God) heard the groaning of his people in Egypt; which of course ought not to be taken for granted, but rather to be taken more seriously and critically beyond the mantra “e lo fokan bale” (just put your mind at rest). To an average commoner in Nigeria, this mantra is turning ridiculous and lifeless as people are practically dying of hunger, or for how long shall we continue to fokan bale and be dying in silence? Mr. President, we are abnormally hungry!
If all the political allies surrounding your Excellency have failed to give you the true picture of our intense agonies and dying state, we will do so ourselves. Therefore, whatever you read here are the true reflections of those who sacrificially gave you that keenly competed mandate that made you the President.
Had the commoners known the mantra “e lo fokan bale” would go beyond the electioneering till a year after they have voted for whom they thought could give them a timely succour, relieving them of the rigorous pains the Buhari led despotic and insensitive government had caused them, perhaps they would have thought otherwise; not even thought, they would have done otherwise.
The situation then was like people were being boiled in hot water, but now, commoners are being roasted in oven, whatever or whoever the cause notwithstanding; hence this epistolary compendium of our (commoners’) predicaments which we are going to itemize precisely and sequentially going forward.
We think there should still be some patriotic and God fearing few ones in your cabinet who could still truly be allegiant to you beyond what we call eye-service sycophantic syndrome (ESSS), we mean the few ones among the selfish majority who could still be kind enough, both to you and the commoners, to bring you the existing bad news in town and not the good news that never exists with us out here. Those who always bring you the unexisting good news are doing you disservice and should be tagged your archenemies and prophets of doom who would always tell the biblical Ahab that the sail was safe and coast was clear in the war ahead of him, when in the real sense of it, that was the last war he would fight. Unfortunately, Ahab followed their advice and locked Micaiah the true prophet in the dungeon for telling him the truth about the imminent end of the king through the war but he (Ahab) eventually met his waterloo as he rejected the voice of the God-sent (a commoner) and never did he live to fight another war! (1Kings 22:5-37).
Dear Mr President, the more patiently you read through this our communique and listen to our outcry, the better for you, your administration and any future dream whatsoever you may have.
Those who are giving you the unreal good news from the populace which they are never part of are only deceiving you to curry your favour and they can never help you or your administration out sir because they cannot in any way out-number the commoners. More so, none of their children stays around here in Nigeria during the electioneering, not to talk of voting during election. They are elites, we are commoners – the foot soldiers you can always find in every nook and cranny of the country which no sane politicians or contestants will dare joke with!
Even in the real sense of it, some of them don’t vote during most elections, ask them to swear to that effect, how many of them in your cabinet voted during the last presidential election? They are all opportunists.
Now, we go on to the episodes of our epistle under different topics and their associated demands.
1.0 THE CALAMITOUS FATALITY OF HUNGER AMONG THE COMMONERS: A DEMAND FOR REALISTIC ALLEVIATION MEASURE
We quickly bring this to the fore of the index of our so many agonies due to the rate lives are being lost of hunger in Nigeria like never before! People are practically dying virtually on daily basis with your name attached to their death, Mr. President – “Tinubu tun ti pa” (Tinubu has killed someone again). We are working seriously on the empirical data of victims and events that occasioned their death nationwide, starting from the south-west, and we shall make detailed list available in the subsequent episodes.
However, in the meantime, we will like to establish the fact that an average commoner in Nigeria cannot afford to eat good food ONCE a day not to talk of conventional three meals per day! Questions being asked by our people now are: how many political functionaries have died of hunger? How many of them are even paying for the food stuffs from their official hard-earned money? Do they even know how much things are cost in the market? Why are the politicians so heartless to be that insensitive to our groaning all this while? Why is nobody telling us the truth at least for once among these politicians that they are there to enrich themselves and not to nourish the commoners? Is it a crime or an ancestral curse for us to vote people of our choice and all being turned to our calamity?
Governors, ministers, senators and the like still go in convoy of fleet of cars on the bill of the commoners, we are surprised that such an ostentatious display is not affected by the present unsavoury economy whereby a commoner who managed to buy a Tokunbo car at the mercy of loan cannot fuel it to take it out; it is the masses that will always need to fokanbale till we all die of hunger and economic hardship! What have the politicians sacrificed ever in this country or the mantra “e lo fokanbale” is only meant for the commoners? When will the politicians reduce their earnings; their domestic workers (who are never duly paid as claimed from the treasury); their fleet of cars and convoy; their allowances and the like? Then we will know the politicians are also part of the daily appealing mantra – e lo fokan bale.
We will also come with correct list of the market prices and comparative analysis index in relative to an average Commoner’s earning in the next episode.
Now, here is our demand for a lasting solution on the issue of hunger. Let us first of all establish the fact that the Commoners are not in any way in support of all the ruseful means of giving food aid to the so tagged poorest of the poor; which even during the lock down when no school was in operation, the “aid” was still “compassionately in operation”!
Even an idiot will want to know what parameter was used to categorise the strata from the positive to the comparative and superlative of the poor, the poorer and the poorest. EFCC may need to go after all these “wealthy poorest” for us to be convinced of where the money sank at different times.
The commoners demand not some measure of grains and packets of noodles, rather we demand that the federal government directly finance the local governments like in the yore years when local government councils were really operational, to embark on specific consumable farming (with full security against the destructive and terrorising herdsmen, avoiding the almighty governors) in both crop and livestock which shall be made available to the commoners at the cheapest amounts.
This process should go with a thorough mandate bordering on a very short timeframe with capital punishment attached to be meted out to any stakeholder messing up with the public fund or resources attached to such; and of course, the commoners will be on guard to give the process a close marking if considered by your Excellency.
On the other hand, in the meantime, while the farming process is ongoing, let the federal government draw empathic insights from the US and the UK means of taking care of their poor and the vulnerable. It’s unfortunate our leaders only talk of the advanced countries each time they want to stiffen more the hardship of the commoners with taxes the latter never enjoy anything for. Then you will hear them justifying the wicked attempt by saying things like, “go to America and England and see how exorbitant their taxes are, you pay tax on virtually everything you own or collect over there”; feigning ignorance of the attendant benefits the commoners enjoy there in terms of security, infrastructure, standard education, gainful employment, uncompromised pension scheme, monthly allowances for the people living with disabilities, portable water, unerratic electricity supply, unslavish telecommunication providers’ charges with due government regulation, etc.
Back here in Nigeria, commoners will pay for night guards to secure their homes and ransom to the kidnappers government fails to curtail; we buy electricity generators and fuel them to have light; federal and state governments “borrow” workers contributory pension and render the senior citizens wretched after years of meritorious service; we politicise education by building colleges/universities and graduate students every year without any employment in sight, whether gainful or gainless; we dig boreholes to drink good water; no data of people living with disabilities not to talk of giving them annual allowance (not even monthly allowance this time); telecommunication companies and foreign cable television outfits rip us off of our hard-earned money with sheer impunity without any government intervention to regulate their exploitative conducts, what they can never try in a working clime, even at where they came from, etc.
For crying out loud, are we not already paying bigger taxes than both the US and the UK put together? You start to wonder what exactly the commoners stand to gain as the dividends of democracy in Nigeria! It is our sincere prayer that Nigerian challenges, especially hunger, will not degenerate to Kenyan situation as earlier mentioned, whereby commoners will prefer to die once heroically by just a bullet in the public place than being killed timorously in silence by hunger in a subtle manner of metaphorical euthanasia! We won’t be surprised if this sincere and critical inferential statement here which actually came out of practical public opinions is christened a treasonable felony by the sycophants around you or used to tag us enfant terrible. Whereas, this they will never tell you.
Yet ironically, one cannot imagine that the wealthiest and most politicians are not even paying any tax in Nigeria but only the commoners who are living from hand to mouth with their meagre salaries or subsistent incomes. The civil and public servants among us (commoners) can tell their story better, how a good chunk of their salary is always being deducted from the source as tax while some other percentage is also sliced as contributory pension they hardly collect eventually. We will need to access the politicians’ tax clearances (as published in the national daily) to refute the “rumour” that no politician pays tax in Nigeria.
At least we’ve heard more than enough news of politicians purchasing expensive SUV cars with tax evaded and nothing dey happen! It is only when commoners want to cross in a Micra car for taxi and two bags of rice from Seme border for livelihood that Custom officers in their selfish and hooliganistic manner will chase such till all involved die in a fatal accident including some innocent citizens intown!
So unethical most times when you see these custom officers breaking shops in the markets within the heart of the towns all in the name of seizing contraband rice they failed to stop at different porous borders! Sir, their reckoning days are numbered, may they not see the wrath of the commoners for once! We hope your excellency will honourably call these unprofessional gatekeepers to order.
So, in respect of taking care of the poor and the vulnerable in Nigeria, we advise your Excellency to draw reasonable insights from the US and the UK practices on this aspect instead of drawing selfish insights from the western world as usually done by most politicians in power each time they want to make more devastating policies or arbitrarily intending to increase any tariff, electricity for instance.
Let your Excellency mandate the relevant commissions to research into the England services like the social care, workhouse, poor-house, family support workers, universal credits, free school meals, etc., alongside the US Medicaid; Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); Anti-poverty policies and programs, etc. Then, we can be sure of a paradigm shift in the area of taking care of the poor and the vulnerable in Nigeria as against the existing dataless means some hyper corrupted political mafia engage to siphon the public funds unaccountably at the expense of the commoners.
Either of the two climes mentioned will get good food with balanced diet (not grains being distributed in Nigeria) and other amenities to the houses of the poor accurately; but here in Nigeria, such can only be done best with the distribution of mosquito nets and polio vaccine (which of course are international communities’ initiatives). We also remember there is government somewhere somehow each time we see “stop work” inscription at the building sites, even in the remotest part of any town by the local government or state ministry’s workers; or during the electioneering when eminent politicians will visit all the wards in their states no matter how far and remote. But when it comes to food and social amenities supply to the poor in the areas, such data won’t be available again, but rather the services of the ungodly party members are engaged and the whole process is corruptly messed up. Or better still, they tell whoever cares to collect any benefit from government to go through one association or the other, or they are referred to their wards; a formula that was not devised during the electioneering, and you begin to wonder if the mandate was given by the votes of associations or individuals or as a corporate vote from the wards. Of course, that will always be obtainable in a systemless country like Nigeria.
So, when the farming process suggested is still being worked on, let the government do a serious work to collate the commoners data through different means possible within maximum of three months. A simple form can be rolled out online to be filled by all citizens with their status and bank account details. Considering issue of illiterates and people without a device to do the registration, let the government charge the National Orientation Agency (NOA) to come out of their unethical hibernation all this while and work this time by orientating such citizens to visit different registration centres opened to that effect to get themselves registered for the scheme. The commission in charge can then follow up on the data collected to confirm the status of the registrants whether they are eligible or not. Though there are still more to that if the government is ready to embark on the scheme to avoid porosity to a very good extent..
Yet, there should be no much ceremony as the whole process should be put in place within the three months suggested and the reliefs can be deployed accurately to the actual people targeted them at with little or no leakages.
2.0 IMPUNITIVE HIKES OF THE ELECTRICITY BILLS AND FACTS ABOUT THE RUSE OF BANDS BY THE ELECTRICITY DISTRIBUTION COMPANIES: A DEMAND FOR A STATE OF EMERGENCY AND EVENTUAL ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENT TAKEOVER
It is quite unfortunate and appalling the level of impunity electricity distribution companies and their accomplice sister companies are operating in Nigeria.
Prior to the grand finale of the crime against all the clients which was officially announced on the 3rd of April, 2024 as related to the unprecedented tariff hike for “only” the band “A” customers, these companies had once or twice increased tariffs discreetly unannounced, which of course were only discovered by some meticulously insightful customers with nothing done to revert such.
Also, presently Mr. President, we are not being deceived that the increment goes beyond band “A”, all other bands are equally affected at different proportions, ranging from over 50% to around 300%. Apart from this wicked palliative of tariff hike at this crucial time of fuel subsidy removal hardship on the part of the commoners, we have also discovered with evidence that virtually every customer using electricity had been upgraded from their former bands to higher bands with at least a step while bands “D” and “E” have been scrapped off in some towns, leaving them with the minimum of band “C” without any difference on the rate of their electricity supply as being campaigned but rather for the worse scenario.
For crying out loud, where on earth did the electricity distribution companies adopt the terms of bands? This is absolutely a ruse or scam in its entirety! Come to think of it in the simplest layman analysis, we think the prayer of any reasonable business person is to have his product sold or consumed quickly; thus, the more a particular customer consumes the product purchased, the more he (the customer) bids for more of the product and eventually the better for the biller or the merchant!
Now, it seems illogical when a merchant tends to restrict a customer for consuming so much of his product by asking him to pay a fine with a higher tariff for doing that! How rational does this sound to a sane mind, Mr. President? This is just like GLO, MTN, AIRTEL and 9MOBILE asking us to pay more because the network in our area is too good! This is laughable! We all know that as soon as you exhaust your data or call credit, you are cut off online and stopped from calling respectively. Shikenah! Why now is the cause for the bands? Did we hear them saying because of no means of measurement of power used in some areas? Ask them where they put the pre-paid meter, sir. Let us respectfully shock you Mr. President, the customers who are using pre-paid meters are also not exempted from this scam of bands! How reasonable could this be when a pre-paid meter can automatically deduct our electricity units proportionally to the usage of the light or power consumed? Then why the bands again?
Dear Mr. President, the introduction of the bands for electricity distribution in Nigeria is totally a calculated scam or/and it comes as a result of ineptness on the part of their Engineers, Data Analysts or/and Accountants. Ironically, the most unfortunate thing is that we have been bound more in darkness with the introduction of this band system as the power outage had never been this erratic!
So, the commoners hereby call on the federal government for the immediate declaration of a state of emergency on the power sector and eventual total takeover of the electricity generation and distribution by the state government, alongside some competent individual companies, both within and outside the country because the companies in charge have failed woefully with high non-performance index. More so that it had been passed into law that different states and individuals can venture into the business.
Therefore, from the parliament of the commoners and in conjunction with the Customers Action Forum (CUSTOMAF) @ www.customafcare.com, we hereby pass a “vote of no confidence” in all the electricity distribution companies in Nigeria, we being their major stakeholders and their overwhelming customers. More so that we bear the burden most, we even pay bills for the rich and the politicians and we will tell you why, Mr President. We have witnessed cases where the electricity workers would want to disconnect the big-wig politicians’ electricity lines for owing more than what a whole street of commoners could owe and the task force would be given the beating of their life by the domestic thugs of these bigger-than-the-law political big-wigs with nothing happening afterwards. Yet, the total cost estimated for that area would still be intact and must be paid. The puzzle now is who clears such bills order than the commoners? Hence, the arbitrary laden crazy bills on the commoners inevitable! You can ask the electricity distribution companies what magic they do to clear such bills for them to still be in the business.
3.0 ARE THE PALLIATIVES MEANT TO BE POLITICAL GRATIFICATION FOR GOVERNORS AND OTHER WHO-IS-WHO IN POLITICS OR FOR HARDSHIP RIDDEN COMMONERS?: A DEMAND FOR SPECIFIC TASK MANDATES FROM THE GOVERNORS BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
It is unfortunate the kind of unempathic leadership we have in our states as led by the almighty governors. These are the governors that will always fight tooth and nail to make sure the local councils remain collapsed under the totalitarian authority of the governors with all the supposed grassroots’ projects being haphazardly executed by the states. Drums are even rolled out shamelessly to commence a shoddy 10 kilometre road for a whole local government, a project statutorily meant to be carried out by the local government itself; which of course will never see the light of the day eventually until the electioneering of the second term of the governor. We have discovered their scam!
These are the governors that will always advocate for the removal of oil subsidy without any plan to give succour to their subjects. We will like to bring to your remembrance Mr. President how these governors mounted pressure on the government of Buhari to remove the subsidy and give them the proceeds to add to their unaccountable security votes at the expense of the commoners. They even proposed the increase of pump price of petrol then to N480 per litre under the disguise of their unconstitutional Governors Forum when petrol price was still at N195 and they eventually achieved their heinous objective and even more. It is quite unfortunate that we only succeeded to achieve a seemingly wrong transition from the Colonial Masters to Political Monsters at some levels of our governance in Nigeria!
These are the governors that even, when the federal government is magnanimous enough to share the Udoji proceeds of the fuel subsidy in term of palliatives alongside the timely and enhanced payment of their allocation, still impoverish their states the more and starve their subjects to death. What exactly they use the palliatives for, nobody knows and they are not answerable to anybody – it is the almighty executive governors we are talking about here! Hence the reason for this sub-title in our communique, Mr. President.
In view of the foregoing, the commoners have all decided to stand against the federal government’s system of distributing any palliative in term of fund to the governors or any political functionaries as we have discovered that it’s another special means for self-aggrandizement on their part.
Going forward, let the distribution of the palliatives mandatorily be conditional and whichever governor does not agree to the terms should be left with his state allocation alone. The federal government should strictly specify what exactly the governors should use the palliative funds for with task mandate.
We have two major suggestions to this effect – electricity generation, (now that it is constitutional for states to do such) and agricultural value chain development projects.
Let each governor sign an undertaking for whatever palliative fund he collects based on the mandate agreed upon with a definite timeframe. How? Say the federal government is releasing the sum of N5Bn to a state in a particular month, let the governor be committed in the undertaking that the money shall be used to start the generation of electricity in his state under the supervision of the federal government while the subsequent releases should see the project to successful completion.
Or on the other hand, any state that chooses the agricultural value chain first should be allowed, also within a timeframe. Whichever governor refuses to abide by this plan should be left with his constitutional monthly allocation. Palliatives are not meant for road constructions and phantom flyovers, these are unquestionable means for self-aggrandizement we all know!
This is the commoners’ decision Mr. President, we defile the palliative of rice, we had never received any, ask the governors. The rice is mostly distributed in their wards among their allies and not for the targeted majority populace. We defile the palliative of noodles and grains, it is a scam! We defile the palliative of roads and flyovers when we are fatally hungry and have no electricity to do our businesses. All the scams must stop!
Apart from the fact that both projects suggested will alleviate the adverse effects of the fuel subsidy removal, they will also provide job in no little measure for most graduate and non-graduate commoners of the states according to their status.
4.0 LIFE STIFFENING FUEL PUMP PRICE CUM ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY: A DEMAND FOR A PERMANENT SOLUTION
It is exigent we add this before we close this episode so that we wouldn’t have “died finish” by the attendant hardship before we put up the next episode of this communiqué.
Even if this perennial fuel crisis was part of “Aole’s shared curse” on Nigeria, we think a leader ought to have undone the effect all these years! Must we always experience this evil per president’s tenure? Are we not always ashamed the streaming and globally shared photos and videos of denting queues at fuel stations?
Analogically, in case of any form of accident, we are all advised to have a first aid rescue approach and even a compact first aid box to take care of the victims in the MEANTIME before they are RUSHED to the hospital. But in the case of Nigeria, we have never thought of any first aid before accident or in case of any adverse situation not to talk of rushing the affected victims to the hospital so long the leadership are not involved in the metaphorical accident!
Mr. President, you exercised an unprecedented bravery in removing the fuel subsidy on the very day you were sworn in but unfortunately failed to exercise the same bravery to prepare for the care of the consequences. Consequences in terms of cushioning the adverse effects on the commoners, combating the fight back of the masqueraders of the fuel subsidy which of course the adverse effects would eventually become the burden on the commoners and other attendant consequences. The action was planlessly taken, hence the afterthought succour to cushion the hardship by palliatives, which of course unfortunately not getting to the appropriate quarters as already inferred in 1.0 and 3.0 above.
Mr. President, between you and us, can we even be sure of any hope in sight on this Port-Harcourt refinery? Is it true the work was not finished as slated for December 2023, later to January 2024 and then shifted to April 2024 afterwards! The truth is that no reasonable human being will believe in any re-fixed date anymore as this mysterious postponement may continue eternally. Though unfounded yet, we have unraveled some reasons to that effect that some forces seemingly bigger than the government and the law in collaboration with external enemies of the commoners are the reasons behind the inexplicable shifts as they believe that the reactivation of the refinery will adversely affect their businesses (the businesses which of course are commoners unfriendly) and in some way relieve the commoners. We demand a rebuttal of this “rumour” if any.
Moreover, on the issue of Dangote refinery, an average commoner does not have the slightest hope in the pseudo prospect that it is going to change anything for the better in alleviating the existing hardship of high prices of petroleum commodities but we rather hope for the worse. This goes beyond ordinary insinuation and defies any element of campaign of calumny for any reason; it is an inference which any low IQ individual can deduce except for political prejudice and unpatriotic collaborative synergy.
The man Aliko Dangote promised us that the arrival of his cement brand in the market would bring relief to us on the seemingly high price of cement which was just between N1,800 and N2,500 then; but unfortunately for the innocent populace of Nigeria, Dangote cement came with an unprecedented upward surge in the market price of cement. Whether true or not, tones of the brand that were wheeled to Ghana were rejected there because of the high price which was not even up to what they sold in Nigeria because of a working system and concerned leadership there. So unfortunate that the same rejected products were brought back to Nigeria and were imposed on us.
Sometime early this year 2024, the Chairman of BUA, Abdul Samad Rabiu, was heard in an interview that the price of cement would come down to something like N3,500 but till date the power behind the commoners’ hardship in Nigeria has not allowed such to see the light of the day, or perhaps “hand don joined hand again”! The same man (Rabiu) proposed a slash in the price of sugar product circa 2023 during a Ramadan period but the proposal was never allowed to stand. But whether by magic or amnesty for sin commoners never committed, some power that be sat and decided on 19th February, 2024 to tune down the price of cement from the neighbourhood of N15,200 to N8,000 this year and it happened! One may now be forced to infer that these slavish prices of cement and some other commodities in Nigeria are man-made and not because some raw materials are expensive nor because of dollar rate!
Therefore, raising our hope again towards the petroleum products from Dangote refinery is seen more by an average commoner as no blessing but otherwise, and so we insist on government intervention and not individual capitalist interception. Let there be government refineries!
Now, coming to the elite marketers versus commoners now, when the fuel is eventually brought to the town, commoners find it easier like hell to get fuel, these disgruntled devil incarnate merchants (with few exceptional ones) squeeze out our blood with price and distorted pumping machine which will dispense 5 litres for 10. They are so devilish to the extent of scheduling selling times for members in that only two filling stations may be granted permission in a whole town to sell for three hours while others lock their gates and so you will be forced to buy at their desired prices at some particular hours that you are in the dire need of the commodity. Though the Customers Action Forum (CUSTOMAF) has already commenced strategic measures to this effect; yet, we are still demanding for stringent government regulation on fuel supply and sale all over the nation. They get engineers to change their machines each time there is increment in pump price while no such engineers will be available in the case of any reduction until they finish their already purchased products. What a callous and unpatriotic scheming practice!
Your Excellency Mr President, we will like to hold on here while we continue later after you’ve taken time to read through this yourself and react to it accordingly.
Thank you for your time.
Signed
Prince Daa
For the Commoners Forum of Nigeria, COMFON
FOR THE ATTENTION OF THE COMMONERS PUBLIC:
We invite as many as are willing to be part of COMFON to follow the link below to fill a form to that effect. Every other process follows in due course. PLEASE NOTE THAT MEMBERSHIP IS FREE AND WE DO NOT SELL HARD COPY FORM THROUGH ANYBODY OR ORGANISATION.
Also, whether you are already a member or not, we will appreciate different confidential information around you to support our claims in the subsequent episodes. Just go through the “contact us” of this website and submit your inputs via email provided. Here are some guides to the expected information:
– market survey of foodstuffs in your area compared to the available jobs and the commoners’ earnings.
– facts and figures of those who have practically died of hunger in your area and brief narratives about their death as known to you.
– different political functionaries’ atrocities around you at different levels, especially the almighty governors.
– different merchants’ exploitations known or done to you with facts and figures. Could be the electricity distribution companies, financial institutions like banks, telecommunication companies, etc.
– any other factual related issues are welcomed.
Join Commoners Forum of Nigeria (COMFON) via this link: https://forms.gle/pijbxQxTbj1w1rNA7
Join Customers Action Forum (CUSTOMAF) via this link: https://forms.gle/mLYojmagJuSqraJz7
Thank you all.
