Leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has advised President Bola Tinubu that rather than worry about a political coalition that could defeat him in 2027, he should me more concerned about the people’s anger against his government.
He stated that the president is politically savvy enough to know that the coalition is not his problem.
“He knows the people in the coalition. They are all friends. There’s hardly anybody in the coalition who you cannot find 10,000 pictures of them with the president. They are all together.
“The real thing that the president should worry about is the resentment of the people and the problems that people are facing in reality.
“It is not the coalition that has been putting pictures and billboards all over,” he stressed.
He blamed President Bola Tinubu for focusing too early on 2027 election, abandoning governance, thereby failing to provide good governance to Nigeria.
He stated that what Nigerians got under Tinubu is not administration but presidency.
He said: “If we are to be fair to the Tinubu government, we should talk about the Tinubu presidency, not the Tinubu administration, because there’s no administration going on.
“What you have is an imperial majesty in the presidency. Their eyes are not to the ground. Do not call them an administration. Just call them the presidency, because they took a note of the fact that you are not the president, and they created a group who are in the State House. Beyond that, they have not been able to create an administration.”
He also noted the President Tinubu and his team of economic experts have not been able to give Nigerians a workable budget for two years running.
He said the president had presented two annual budgets to Nigerians but lamented that the last one was far worse than the first one. He stressed that neither of the two budgets has been able to get a grip of anything.
“They have not been able to write a single good budget. They are reaching two budgets now and the only difference is that the one that came after is worse than the one before.
“They are not able to get a grip of anything. They are not doing well with employment. They need to know that the tool for dealing with poverty is employment,” he stated.
Adebayo further picked holes in the much celebrated student loan programme, stressing that all that the Tinubu administration needed to have done to give education access to an average Nigerian without seeking for loan was to bring the cost of education down.
“I don’t agree with them on their student loan, because all you need to do is bring the cost of education down, and an average person will be able to go to school without needing a loan.
“But even with the loan, they are not able to administer it properly. So anything they touch. The Tinubu Presidency is not a government. It may be a political movement that has now found itself in power,” he said.
He expressed worry that Tinubu and his cohorts were more interested in enlarging their political coast and building more business empires than addressing the needs of the people they govern.
“What you see dominating them and the focus of their existence is more power in enlarging their political coasts, enlarging business empires that support that political empire, and continuing to play chess while the house is burning. They play political chess while the entire warehouse is burning.
“It is an election snatching machine that is getting stronger. And I’m not jealous of the fact that they’re getting stronger. I’m worried about the fact that they are using government time, government resources to do so,” he stated.
However, he commended President Tinubu for finding time to visit Katsina State to meet with soldiers fighting against insurgency and boost their morale instead of winning and dining with political manipulators around him.
“Anybody who wants to be president, like me and others, must be prepared to give good governance to the people. If the person who is there; whom you want to defeat and take over from, is giving good governance, somehow you’ll be happy,” he added.
