Tinubu should have been President 30 years ago, not now – SDP’s Adebayo

Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the last general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has again commented on the state of the nation, saying President Bola Tinubu’s performance in office is below expectation. He also decried the lackadaisical approach of Nigerians in matters that affect their growth and well being, even in the […]

Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the last general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has again commented on the state of the nation, saying President Bola Tinubu’s performance in office is below expectation. He also decried the lackadaisical approach of Nigerians in matters that affect their growth and well being, even in the hands of their leaders. He said despite the increasing hardship experienced by the vast majority of the people occasioned by government unfriendly policies, Nigerians have repeatedly shown that they would rather smile in their suffering than protest against government. Excerpt below:

 

The economy is biting majority of Nigerians, but it is many big men are not saying much, are you affected by the economic situation?

As leaders, whatever our people are going through, we are also going through it. The pain began to affect me even before the election because I already saw what was coming. So, it’s a case of a doctor who can see that the patient has cancer even though the patient is not aware.

So, you saw this coming?

Not only did I see it coming, but I said it that it was coming. And I said it everywhere. Nigeria has only one problem. All the problems they are telling you about Nigeria are just symptoms of one problem. And that is bad governance. Like Mrs Tinubu said that her husband was not the cause of the problem. The husband is the symptom of the problem.

How do you mean?

Politics that could sum up all the challenges Nigeria is facing, sum up 16 years of PDP, 8 years of Buhari, and conclude that Tinubu should be president. That kind of mindset is the problem. When you sum up the problem of the country, the journey taken so far, the challenges of the moment, you will choose leadership that meets the challenges of the moment. It is possible for anyone to be president. And anyone can be captain of the ship. It is the question of the time. Thirty years ago, Tinubu could have been president, but not now. We should try as much as possible to choose our leadership to meet the challenges of the time.

Why not now for the Tinubu presidency?

To start with, there is no clear philosophy. I don’t want to play with words, but emi lokan, it is my turn, is not a philosophy.

How about the Renewed Hope agenda?.

If you look at the content of the Renewed Hope Agenda, when renewal of hope starts with removal of your roof over your head, removal of food from your mouth, removal of support for industry and maintaining normal living. When the method chosen is the most damaging of all the options. If I have a cold and there are five doctors . One says go and have a rest. The 2nd says take warm liquid. The other says he wants to do brain surgery for me. The one that wants to do brain surgery is not qualified to be a doctor because the solution he wants to give me is worse than the problem I have.

That is what I see in this scenario. Everything that brought us to where we are today is because of three major problems. One, Buhari, because of economic illiteracy and lack of awareness. Remember his mantra of “I am not aware” . “I am not aware”. I am not aware. He was not able to govern physically such that his government was always doing ways and means ; always borrowing and borrowing. Secondly, they wouldn’t govern any proper administration, such that the subsidy they said they were going to remove balloon out of proportion out of their hands.

Thirdly, they couldn’t grow the GDP effectively. These are simple problems you have from time to time. But look at the solutions Tinubu, Atiku, and even Peter Obi brought forward, a solution that does not make any economic sense. The solution was that they are going to remove subsidy from a product that is transcendental product. Nobody buys petrol to drink like wine. You buy petrol to do an activity, to travel or to work, it is a productive use of energy which cuts across every field. We had the supply side of our foreign exchange, nothing more than that.
Our foreign exchange hasn’t grown in thirty years. So if you have the supply side, saying that you are going to float it, where is the supply going to come from?

The assumption is that some external support will bring in foreign direct investments. But if you want to have a good home, having a nice bedsheets is one of them. But having nice bedsheets won’t guarantee of having a good home because if the roof is leaking, that bedsheets won’t no longer be nice over time. One of the tools you need for having foreign direct investment is a stable or predictable foreign exchange. But even that is not enough. You need to have respect for the contract. You need to have a rule of law. You need to have security. You need to have a good justice system. You need to have lower cost of factors so that if I am bringing my industry and I am producing like Aliko Dangote who is selling fuel, how is he going to sell fuel to somebody who is in Sokoto?

Are you telling me that in this 2024, anybody will conceive that you will be trucking fuel in Lekki, Lagos to Maiduguri? Then you will be trucking it to Calabar and other places. It does not make any sense. These are some of the problems we had which they came to worsen it the more. That is the problem they have now which is why I feel bad that a very simple economic situation that needs few measure of government discipline, you didn’t take any of that, you expanded the government beyond, even in the government prioritisation government expenditure, you are spending money on the least productive of items and then you yank off support from the economy.

They created inflation and then turned the CBN governor to Paul Folca, and now, he had to “Folcarise” the economy raising interest rates.

That should be in a bid to lower inflation?

Yes. But you caused the inflation. The problem Paul Folca had when he was appointed by President Carter as chairman of Federal Reserves, Carter had inherited both from Nixon and Ford high inflation
He thought the only way he could kill high inflation was to raise interest rates, because cheap credit was driving the inflation. But our inflation in Nigeria is not driven by cheap credit. In fact, there is not sufficient banking penetration, and the lending capacity of our banks is so small that even regional and community that are high advised overseas have more money than the largest bank in Nigeria. The tension of raising interest rates is that you will suffer one certain problem; you will shrink the economy by having a recession to slow down prices. But in Nigeria, it will spiral out of control because productivity will go so low.

It appears the continuous increase in rate by the CBN is working. Look at the progress in the inflation rate. it’s slightly going down. GDP has slightly improved, too.

If you look at the differential in inflation rate, look at the statistics. You will look at the component that drives the inflation, which still continues to drive inflation. Look at the base increase. How many bases point did you increase the rate versus how many points did you drop in the inflation?

Secondly, if you look at the GDP, which is raising essentially as a result of the nominal increases in the price of factors. If your GDP is rising, it should reflect in your employment. It is not reflected in employment. I think the conclusion is that they have taken the wrong measures.

You are saying the GDP growth rate is not trickling down?

Yes, it is not. There are two obvious things to the problem. Your GDP in the absolute, don’t take the difference in the marginal in your GDP, you must adjust against the marginal increase in your population because if the rate of growth of population is higher than the GDP you will have negative GDP. If you look at the illusion of money, you must calculate your GDP relative to stability.

We don’t have sufficient good reserve with which we can measure it. We probably use US dollars to measure it. We also need to understand another thing that the US dollars is under some unusual inflationary pressure . So, when you adjust against a nominal increase against the foreign exchange differential when you adjust against the official dollar inflational rate, you now juxtapose that one against population growth. That is why nobody is smiling at you. If they say one is exaggerating what is going on on the streets, well, how well can they fund their programmes and budget? They need to fundamentally rejig the economy they have made serious mistakes.

The President has consistently said he is not going to reverse his policies, what can you say about this?

He can say no reversal for two reasons. You know there was a time in this country where Chief Olu Falae, then secretary to the federal government in 1986, who said there is no alternative to SAP. So, if you limit your thinking and tunnel vision about the economy, you will come and say there is no alternative. There is always an alternative. That is what economics is all about.

Talking about alternatives, the three major candidates of the APC,PDP and Labour, during the campaign, all promised they would remove subsidy and float the currency, you didn’t go that route, you presented other alternatives…..

First thing to do in an economy is to realise that there is a lot of wealth trapped in the talent and energy of the people such that the first thing you need to do is to target the reduction of unemployment. The reason why monetary economics is allowed is that the fundamental objective of monetary economics is to achieve good employment, not only of labour but on all factors of production so that you have allocative efficiencies that are clearly want to make you want to invest your money in the economy and get people employed.

There are five areas you can look into. Agriculture. That is number one because it employs the highest number of people, it is also a low hanging fruit that it is easy to start. Anybody with a tractor and bucket can get started. It is scalable so that you can not go into producing raw materials, producing other things that are additives. It will also make sure you govern your territory such that you are now in full control of your land, a land where a large portion of it are being shared with bandits as some of them are not in the control of the government. With agriculture, you will create employment and solve the problem of food as well. If you look at the incidence of food prices in the entire aggregation of inflation, it will come down.

Also, you have to invest in infrastructure. Investment infrastructure means that you don’t allow people to do for themselves as individuals things we can all do collectively. That means you want to make sure people travelling from one end of the country to the other don’t have to travel in their own vehicle because you have public transport. You need to give people good health. You need to build rural health facilities as this will employ people and even keep people healthy and more productive. You need to make social investment in education. Many cases of unemployment we are dealing with our time will be rapidly dealt with recruiting teachers but the problems of the governors even with all the money they are making now is that they don’t want to employ people because when they employ, there is less discretionary spending because if you employ, you must pay as you are bound by contract. Some states, rather than increase compensation for their staff, they tell their staff to come about twice a week.

If you had won, you would not have removed the subsidy and floating of the currency. What would you have done…..?

Look at the costing. I am taking their numbers so that they won’t say I’m second-guessing. When the noise first came out, it was under President Jonathan. At that time, it was travelling towards a trillion. At a time, it was N1.something trillion. When President Buhari came, despite the I am going to remove subsidy, it travelled all the way to N4 trillion in the budget but there was some transparency in the lies such that you had to budget it in the book. It was there in the book. When we were campaigning, some were saying that if we were not careful, it would come to about 8 trillion.

For me, if we audit our consumption, definitely we don’t consume up to 2 trillion at the old price. Secondly, if we get our refineries to work, and the reason why our refineries are not working, Nigerians need to know, and that is the government doesn’t want them to work.

Let me give you a simple explanation. When you are trying to repair an existing refinery, but you have not finished repairing it but somebody get an architect to draw a map of a refinery, went to negotiate land in many places, got land, started construction, finished constructing and is selling and you haven’t finished repairing the one already on existence. What does that tell you? It tells you that the priority is to make sure that those things don’t work.

Is it interest within the government that doesn’t want it to work or interest within NNPCL?

NNPCL is part of the government, and nobody gets appointed without government approval. The idea is that they don’t want to run the government. They don’t want to run the economy. They are fighting to take control of the petroleum market. They see you as a customer, not as citizens. They don’t want to be responsible for ensuring you have a good life of training your children, you can go to work with 7% of your salary to pay for transportation.

Perhaps you are right. They said recently that the rich may pay as much 25% on personal income tax, What is your take?

I, Adewole Adebayo, government, come and tax me, and I am ready to pay 50% of my income in taxes. I don’t mind. After all, in Norway, it is higher than that. But I am spending billion, literally, to power my productive enterprises. But you can not pauperise us, take all the taxes, and still not be responsible for anything.
Anybody who tells you that we should remove subsidy from an underdeveloped economy where productivity is low had F9 in economics. In China, with 10000 dollars, you can have a factory in China. All you need to Do is to demonstrate to the city or the government there that you are producing this particular product. If they see the production plan, they will give you a factory on credit, and you start paying back. That is not available here in Nigeria. That is why China is the largest producer finished goods, because of the subsidy. And you don’t have to be in China even if you are overseas. If its US, the first thing they welcome you with is a letter come and borrow money. Sometimes, the federal reserves give money to banks at negative interest to force them to lend to people.

During Covid 19, I was here in Nigeria. When I went to the US, I got stack of letters, awarding me money, wanting to give money to my law firm. They are subsidizing with credit. If you go to Europe, they are subsidizing with social services. You the employer of labour, when your worker is sick, you are not the one to pay because every worker , every citizen has life insurance and other social services, so it is cheaper to hire labour there.

Come back to my beloved Nigeria . What is it that is incentive for productivity? Nothing. So you can not compete. So the little people are enjoying because we are petroleum rich country, we should now have low energy cost. That is what will drive you to say, let me go to Nigeria to take advantage of the low energy cost for my production.

How about offering a tax holiday?

Tax holiday is one of the ways by which they still have our money. Somebody will do 100 kilometer poorly done cement road, very narrow, not standardised, and they give him billions, the same road that can be done by local government. Just collect your taxes.

I hope there won’t be a tipping point to all this?

I don’t want us to reach a tipping point because the tipping point is a mirage. You would think people will never accept N500 per litre. They accepted 1000 plus and they are going towards 2000 without anybody stopping them. We need to govern. That is the summary. Any government that can not help you find your missing cat or missing dog, after a while, they won’t be able to find a missing child. After a while, they won’t be able to find a missing town. After a while, a while community will go. Going to the Eagle Square to hold the bible or Quran and say a few words, salute the police and then disappear into the shadows doesn’t make you a government. The people must feel your presence if you truly you are governing.