The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Ebenezer Adebayo, says light cannot be at the end of the tunnel if the government which is advocating for Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for the citizens, has its own vehicles run on petrol.
Speaking in a chat with Daily Trust, Adebayo posited that the focus of the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu-led administration at the moment is not the economy but “how to settle down and be a government.”
His words: “They have made two policies. The first being that they affirmed the policy of the Buhari administration and the APC that they would remove subsidy from petrol, which they have done, and the attendant inflation is already coming in.
“Secondly, they harmonised the foreign exchange market. But in terms of focusing on the economy, they have not.”
On the Federal Government’s intervention programme occasioned by the fuel subsidy removal he said, “Everything is off, not just the timing. What are we discussing here? Is it governance, poverty, or alleviation or how to run the economy industrial dispute or fall out of removal of subsidy. this is an endless discussion. I hope this is not how they are going to be for the next four years.
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“On whose behalf is labour talking? Is it talking on behalf of its members, NLC and TUC – or its talking on behalf of 133 million Nigerians who are in extreme poverty for whom there is a governor elected to represent them so the governor should represent them in their states – or you are talking of the 774 local government area chairmen across the country – or you are talking about the councillors who live with the poor. What I see here is just bickering where policies are not clear. There is no white paper. Just mere announcements. I don’t think this is how to run government in this era 2023.”
Pointing out solutions to the hardship being faced by citizens, the former SDP candidate opined that “there are three ways they can handle the impact of subsidy. They can provide alternatives, which is the Compressed Natural Gas, CNG they are talking about. If they can focus on that, you could get 1m conversion in one year. If that is what you want to do, you come out and focus on it.
“Again, the first example one would notice is that has the government itself converted its own vehicles to CNG? If the government vehicles are still running on petrol and want the people to be on Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, then there is a problem.”
“I don’t want to be an arbiter between government and labour because both of them agreed during the campaign that they are going to remove subsidy. Ask labour what their plan is. Do they have a blueprint that can be presented to the government apart from increasing minimum wage?” he queried.
