The Social Democratic Party (SDP) candidate in the 2023 presidential election, Barr Adewole Adebayo, has disclosed that he is neither disappointed nor agitated about the state of the country.
According to him, the consequences of the policies adopted by President Bola Tinubu would have been more severe if they had been implemented by someone else.
Adebayo stated this in his assessment of the state of the economy ahead of President Bola Tinubu’s one year in office on May 29.
According to him, Tinubu is a politician who has kept to his word since his assumption of office as Nigeria’s president.
He said, “I’m one of the few Nigerians who are not disappointed, and I’m one of the few Nigerians who are not surprised.
“When we were running for the presidency, we did not only talk about ourselves; we talked about the SDP’s manifesto and what I would do as president. I also compared what the alternatives would be if Nigerians voted for the PDP, what the country would be like if they voted for the APC, and what it would be if they voted for the Labour Party, which I considered a branch of the PDP at the time.
“To be honest, I am personally not disappointed, and I’m not agitated at all. Rather, I’m pleasantly surprised that the country is not worse than this. So, I am not joining in wailing and complaining because I studied the nitty-gritty of what it will mean to be president, chief executive, and commander in chief. I knew the kinds of decisions that would have to be taken and the consequences of these decisions.
“So far, so good. There are five things I can say: one is that President Tinubu has not disappointed me at all, and maybe the voters will have to convince me if they can say he has disappointed them because he hasn’t deviated much from what he said he would do. So, I cannot say I’m disappointed. He’s a politician who keeps his word, and he’s been keeping his word.
“So it’s not like, oh, he promised something, but when he came in, he was doing something else. He’s doing exactly what he said he would do. And if you also follow his governance record when he was Lagos State Governor for 8 years, that’s exactly what he did.
“Secondly, for the policies that he adopts, the consequences of these policies are not even as severe as they would have been if someone else were implementing them. So, the drastic policies that they adopted and the drastic and desperate consequences of them are consistent with anywhere such decisions have been taken.
“The third reason why I am not disappointed is that it appears as if the majority of the decisions he has taken were carried along by the three arms of government. There’s no pushback by the National Assembly and the Judiciary, and there’s also no serious pushback by civil society. So, it looks to me that his decisions are popular even though they are inconvenient.”
He added, “As a Democrat, I’m not disappointed. Occasionally, I am moved by humanity. Occasionally, it affects me when I see all the other options we could have taken, like if you look at the national problem that we say we are trying to solve.
“This is the first year of Tinubu’s administration, so I can say that either Nigerians are not paying attention or that they are just not ready to make sacrifices.
“If you had followed the path I recommended, which is that we follow Chapter 2 of the Constitution, we do social investment, and we ensure that we do not follow IMF policies because they just won’t work, not that we should quarrel with the IMF, no, but that we should understand that when you follow your wife to the hospital because she’s pregnant and the doctor is making recommendations and giving her prescriptions, that may not be suitable for you as a man who is not pregnant because they’re not meant for you.
“So, if the IMF is prescribing something that can work in other countries that are not like ours, we can say we are not going to follow everything you say. I see that many Nigerians are disappointed, but it is not the fault of President Tinubu that they are disappointed. They are either disappointed because some didn’t vote for him. So their disappointment started before he started implementing his policies.
“The moment the candidate you voted for loses an election, you get disappointed, and whatever that person does after your disappointment is not thereby reduced.
“In a game of football, whether your team wins or loses, everybody goes home with no consequence. But in an election, you don’t just go home; you may not have a home to go to. There will be insecurity, no food, and serious health challenges, and the economy may be so tumultuous that you cannot live a decent life.
“The third group of people who are disappointed are those who just don’t understand that policies take time to mature and that even if the policies you agree with are implemented, they still need time to impact the lives of people. And then the last group are those who are disappointed because of other ethical issues that they are seeing in the government, like breaches of processes and things like that.
“For me, none of these were outside my prescriptions. In fact, I predicted the value of our currency, unemployment level, inflation, hyperinflation, cost of doing business, cost of living, factor cost, and so many other things.
“I emphasised that the issues of the day were that people were asking me whether it was the turn of the South to produce a president or whether the Muslim-Muslim ticket was more appropriate than having Christians.
“For me, this doesn’t matter. I am not running for president to answer this kind of question. The questions I want to answer are those relating to quality living, standard and quality education for our children, good housing, security, and the general productivity of the country.
“These kinds of questions are the things that disappoint people. For those who believe in religion, even when someone of their religion wins, they now realise they have won nothing. Those who believe in ethnicity realise that when someone of their ethnicity wins, they have won nothing. For those who believe in money politics, the money they collected to vote is already gone.
“This is where governance made our decision, and I think we are lucky as a people that we have one year of peace and no war. The democracy we put in place in 1999 has continued to endure. We have done half a quarter of a century. By May 29, we will have a quarter of a century of civilian government, and we are seeing a continual democracy, learning that those who have power and who think they will be there forever are already spending one-quarter of the time now. So, very soon, all of us will be equal.”
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