Reasons Tinubu’s economic policies are not working —Adebayo

NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the February 2023 presidential election, Mr Adewole Adebayo, speaks with SUBAIR MOHAMMED on the current economic hardship in the country and proffers possible solutions.

YOU lost in the last presidential election to President Bola Tinubu, do you think the country could have been better with you as president?

Definitely. I am not surprised at the state of the economy but I am disappointed. I am not surprised because we predicted this outcome. During the 2023 presidential debate, we urged Nigerians to pay attention to issues. There were three issues that needed to be dealt with. First was the cost of governance. Another was the subsidy removal not only on petroleum but in other sectors of the economy and lastly, the issue of foreign exchange. On these three issues, I disagreed with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu of the APC, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the PDP and former Governor Peter Obi of the Labour Party. It has never worked in any country. When SAP was introduced in Nigeria, it didn’t work for us. It is not about either one person is good and the other person is bad. If you drag me to the Aso Villa or the Eagle Square and you forced me to announce these policies, you will get the same result. Anyone who adopts these same policies will get the same result.  Economists would ask if there are countries that have adopted these policies; are there countries within our hemisphere, countries within our state of development and primary production sector that have adopted these policies and it worked, I don’t think so. I am surprised that some personalities were talking about the Argentina model; I am very familiar with this model. If you ask an average Argentine to choose between President Javier Milei and President Bola Tinubu, they will tell you to bring Tinubu and they will gladly give you Milei.

So, you said Atiku Abubakar was wrong when he recommended the Argentina model to Tinubu?

I can say Vice President Atiku Abubakar may be well intentioned but he was misinformed. It was an error. If you look at the situation in Argentina, we may get to that position. I hope we are not yet there. We are traveling in that direction but they are ahead of us in terms of economic misery.  Argentina had one month of hyper-inflation which was at 512 percent. I don’t know if economists can understand the temperature of 512 percent inflation. They have lost virtually all their wealth. The Argentine president is from the Austrian school of thought. The Argentines are complaining on a daily basis as they have had the worst economy performance since 1980. I am not saying we should not criticise a non-performing government of President Tinubu but you cannot say a person that is complaining of too much heat should be put in the oven, that’s not the way to solve the problem. These policies are not working but it’s unfortunate that Nigerians voted for these policies. We voted for these policies either because we didn’t pay attention to issues or we didn’t understand their implications. When Nigerians voted for a government that says it will remove subsidy, which was what President Tinubu announced on day one, which was what Vice President Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi promised, and Nigerians thought they have experience and that they are more realistic than us. So, they voted that way. So, any of them that formed the government and adopted any of these policies, will have at the minimum, what we are experiencing now or even worse. These policies are not good, not because of the political parties that announced them but because they are not structurally suitable to us.  Of course, they come with some benefits and these benefits are visible. It means more income for the government because subsidy regime is no more. It means more income from the foreign exchange differential because they are not defending the naira in the old way anymore. You also have the benefits of goods becoming cheaper, that’s why some people are exporting goods from Nigeria to Niger and other neighbouring countries because with lower currency, our goods and other products become cheaper, those are the advertised benefits, but we are not structurally prepared for them.