EDITORIAL: A Time Of Dishevelment

IT has been a difficult time nationwide with the ongoing glitch in the supply chain for Petroleum Motor Spirits (PMS). Very dispiriting to observe sagging morale as citizens line up for fuel nationwide.

The issue remains “what is to be done”. We have postponed an answer for far too long and we must face daunting realities now. For a start, the daunting fiscal paradox can no longer be ignored. 

It must be that election cycle paradigm but the government is looking rather unrealistic in insisting on a N165 per liter end-user sales price. Cynical observers depict this as a valiant effort to defy both the law of demand and supply as well as defying gravity rolled into one. The sustainability of this balancing act is suspect.

An accommodation must be forged with the marketers who are not narcissists or saboteurs. The conventional wisdom is that they are trying to balance the books and for this, they appear to have widespread sympathy. Common sense dictates that a compromise is urgently needed to prevent widespread dislocation. The populace deserves a respite in this season of discontent.

In the long run the next government will have to take the vital and peharps brutal decisions.