APC’s Unspoken Rules of Fuel Subsidy

The voice of Ganiat Fawehinmi, the wife of the late eminent civil rights lawyer, Gani Fawehinmi, was loud on the third day of the 2012 Occupy Nigeria protest: ‘When you see Babangida,’ she said, ‘ask him where he kept our $12 million windfall. When you see Iweala, ask her if this is the way the government of where she came from treat their citizens.’ Eventually, she screamed, ‘If you see Diezani Alison-Madueke, ask her how she got the money to buy a house in Vietnam. God will punish all of them.’ The crowd she was firing at roared back too, with even more gusto. ‘If you no gree for ₦65 na war o, anything wey you want we go give you, na revolution go be the next step o,’ two men out of the sea of protesters declared matter-of-factly to the incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan. All these people, perhaps over a hundred thousand, were tightly absorbed at the Ojota axis of Lagos, vehemently remonstrating against the official removal of fuel subsidy by the Petroleum Product Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) on 1 January 2012.