The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has faulted the approach adopted by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to address the issues of high cost of governance, subsidies and foreign exchange crisis, saying they are not suitable to Nigerians.
Adebayo, who spoke in an interview, said the President’s policies to address these issues were not working, adding that Nigerians unfortunately voted for the policies.
“We voted for these policies either because we didn’t pay attention or we didn’t understand the implications of these policies. When you decide to vote for a government that says it will remove subsidy day one, which was what President Tinubu said, which was what former Vice President Atiku Abubakar said, which was what former governor Peter Obi said, then you voted for the policies. But people thought they have experience and maybe they are more realistic than us. So, they voted that way. These policies are not good, not because of the parties announcing them but because structurally they are not suitable to us,” he said.
Adebayo said the President needed to be convinced that the benefits expected from his economic policies would turn out to be a mirage.
He added: “They never came to England. England industrialised itself. These benefits didn’t come to Brazil until President Lula came and changed them towards social investments. I don’t know where they are getting the policies from; I suspect they are from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the bankers who are contributing to their campaign. But if they are ideologically committed to these policies, then the solution they can find will be solution by palliative, which is to suspend the full effect of it over time.
But what they will soon discover is that the social misery will be so much; the inflation and hyperinflation will be so much that the money they saved may not be up to the money they spend on palliative.
“So, they need a change of direction even though I cannot guarantee that a well experienced accountant, who is a cost cutter like Tinubu, who has Wale Edun around him and chose Yemi Cardoso as his preferred Central Bank Governor, will be willing to change for now. I think they should just be a little more efficient in the macro-economy policies they have taken,” he added.
He recommended five measures the government could take to salvage the economy.
Adebayo noted: “One of such is that they must have a way to increase their revenue, because right now, they are just collecting less than 20 per cent of the collectibles. There are so many sacred cows they don’t want to collect money from.
“Secondly, they need to bring efficiency to their accounts. Running a free market economy as they are going towards, they need more feedback, more sensitivity, quicker reaction time, which means they need to put more sharper and smarter people in their governance. Thirdly, they need to restructure the government spending in such a way that they separate the fiscal spending which they are controlling and let the CBN governor run his monetary policy and be banker to the country not the banker to the government alone. Fourthly, they need to find ways to generate employment. They don’t want to spend money on social programmes as stated in Chapter Two of the constitution, which means they will be going to Qatar and other places because the sovereign investment money they need to spend to generate employment, they don’t want to spend it because they are following the IMF. Now they will be begging foreign investors to come and put money in our country, money we have even within our country. But they will be going out; if they are not efficient in that regard, then, they can succeed.
“Lastly, they need to do something about inflation by controlling their spending, increasing their revenue and ensuring they get Nigerians to be productive.”
