By Sunday Ani, Lagos
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has said that his administration would not depend on oil money.
“Nigeria makes about $20 million from ginger. Even in a good year, we don’t gross up to $120 million a year. If only we invest a little more to squeeze our ginger and get ginger oil, we will be making $1.4 billion from ginger oil. If you go into the value chain of some of the produce, you will see that petroleum isn’t a big deal. At the peak of Jonathan’s tenure when the oil price was above $100 and everybody was clapping, I wasn’t really impressed because I have an oil palm plantation and I was selling my palm oil at $660 per barrel. This was why Michael Okpara created the Ada Palm in the Eastern region. I am not the kind of president who is running for office because of NNPL. The Presidency under me won’t share oil money. Rather, I will put the federal government allocation of the money into a sovereign fund and then dedicate it to building hospitals all over the place. I am not going to mainstream oil money into my budget. The present generation has spent enough of oil money; we need to keep it for the future,” he said
The candidate also promised full disclosure of Nigeria’s money from the day he was sworn in as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, saying that Nigeria’s money has for too long been shrouded in secrecy.
“One of the things that Nigerians will know when I get into office is where their money is. There is too much mystery about Nigeria’s money. Even President Muhammadu Buhari cannot say how much money Nigeria has. Board members of the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), now Nigeria National Petroleum Limited (NNPL) don’t know how much the company has. The Minister of Finance does not know where the government’s money is. You will have a full forensic of where your money is once I get into office,” he assured.
Adebayo expressed reservation about the name change, insisting that it would not produce any positive result with a change of mind. “If there is no change of circumstances or change of mind on the part of those running the NNPL, it will amount to the same result. It is the corporate culture and corporate governance that must be there to make it functional. I will review a lot of it when I become president. The control, negotiation and collection of revenue on behalf of the government will be taken away from them completely,” he said.
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On President Buhari’s order to the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu, to resolve the FG/ASUU crisis within two weeks, he said it was just an order that has no content. “This new mandate given to the minister is quite too little and late. It is better than nothing though. My fear is whether the minister will be able to act on it. The person who you call minister and he voluntarily answers should know that this is one of the worst crises a country can go through and he doesn’t need the president to order him to deal with it. It’s possible the minister might have sent his recommendations to the president’s table and he might not have seen it. Ordinarily, one should have heard that the minister is fired. I think the president is to blame for this. The president has children, his children have friends and his ministers have children. So, he is not living under a rock. He knows that ASUU is on strike, so giving two weeks’ ultimatum to his minister now is more of a later-day theatre. The ASUU crisis could have been resolved six years ago. It shouldn’t take more than six hours to resolve the crisis now for anybody determined to do the work, because their demands are not new; they are old demands and the same demands when I was an undergraduate at Ife. I thought the president should have taken a memo from the ministers of education, labour and finance, signed his own part of the agreement and sent it to ASUU to sign theirs. I don’t think ASUU will change anything in their demands; it will be unpatriotic to do so,” he noted.
He further noted that the issue of vote buying as reported during the last governorship election in Osun State could only be curtailed with the strict enforcement of the electoral laws. “The Osun State election was a pre-arranged scene where the voter was expecting to be approached and political party agents were already prepared for them. It was a willing buyer and willing seller, unlike in Ekiti, where people were shouting and calling attention of everyone, including the security agencies against it. Vote buying in Osun appeared not offensive to the people there. Unlike the days of Bola Ige and Omololu Olunloyo, times have changed for the worse now. Selling the future of your child or getting your children out to actually come and sell their future is as bad as that. I am not saying political parties or contributors who are rich cannot spend their money, but spend your money on legitimate things. Do bigger rallies and advertising. Anybody who can sell their votes can vandalise government property because they are saying that the government is different from them as they have already alienated themselves from the government. They are the people who will eventually collaborate with the bandits and take sides with armed robbers,” he said.