By Chukwudi Nweje, Lagos
The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Adewole Adebayo, has said that Nigerian voters are partly to blame for President Bola Tinubu’s announcement of the removal of the subsidy on petroleum products during his inaugural address on May 29.
He said the fuel subsidy removal is part of the campaign promises of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and that Tinubu only implemented what the party promised.
Adebayo, who spoke in a televised interview, however, noted that adequate cushioning buffers should have been put in place before the announcement.
He said, “I will remind Nigerians that they had options during the presidential election but they decided to go with the three major parties ─ the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Labour Party (LP) that said they were going to remove fuel subsidy.
These parties were handsomely rewarded with 90 per cent of the total votes cast in the presidential election.
“These parties that said they would remove subsidy were handsomely rewarded with 90 per cent of the total votes cast in the presidential election; people like us in the SDP who said no, the subsidy is a way to control other cost drivers and to avoid cost-push inflation, cut the corruption, provide social safety nets for the people, and cut the heavy burden of wastage on corruption; I think that was also the position of somebody like Omoyele Sowore and you can see that the voters didn’t think we had a better argument so we didn’t do too well but the three other parties did so well.”
He stated that Nigerians must reflect on the choices they made at the 2023 general elections and understand that electoral choices have consequences.
“It is left for Nigerians to understand that elections have consequences. They have four years to reflect on whether they made the right decision in the 2023 election.
“The removal of the fuel subsidy reflected the APC’s campaign promise, they don’t reflect that of the SDP. If I had been fortunate to be the one taking the oath of office you would have got a different speech. What we have decided to do is not to continue to litigate the election result and to realize that their (APC’s)own point of view is different has won the day and to evaluate what they say, not viz-a-viz what we would have said but what they said they will do. They said they said they would remove the fuel subsidy and we thought that was a bad idea,” he said.
Adebayo said President Tinubu did not weigh the consequences of his pronouncements when he declared during his inaugural speech that “fuel subsidy is gone.”
According to him, the president should have also announced cushioning palliatives when he announced the subsidy removal.
He further said, “Under the subsisting law, the subsidy was already gone before President Tinubu came in, maybe he just decided to emphasise it.
He said Tinubu failed to realise the weight his words carry as Nigeria’s president.
He further said Tinubu didn’t realise that his voice is the weather vane of Nigeria and that whatever he says would move the major markets. It appeared that he had a targeted audience that he wanted to communicate to, like the Breton Woods institutions but he forgot the most important people, the people of Nigeria, he just said fuel subsidy is gone; it is like telling a mother a child is missing, it will cause panic.”
“If you want to announce a policy like fuel subsidy removal, you cannot isolate the price increase, you must also announce other things that will calm people’s nerves down, but it doesn’t change the fact that part of the mandate given the APC government is to go and remove fuel subsidy.
He noted that having removed subsidy, the APC government must also allow the deregulation of the market and some degree of competition.
“The cost driver of fuel in Nigeria is importation and importation is a conjoined twin with the foreign exchange. It is remarkable that he said that he will create a convergence of the exchange rate, which he delivered better than he did with subsidy removal. The language he used was so therapeutic that people did realise that what he said was that he would devalue the naira because he is saying that he would harmonise the exchange rate and there is no way you would harmonise the exchange rate and it would trend south; it is going to trend north. Normally the official rate is the only one that can travel’ what they call the black market rate or autonomous rate is already floating in the market, it will remain there and meet with the official rate which had been under bondage.
He stated that the Tinubu administration must wake up because it no longer has four years to stay in power.
“The Tinubu government must wake up to the task, it no longer has four years to stay in power; part of the four years had already been spent.
“I had low expectations, but I saw that he was precise in his speech and had nugget, so you could take that speech and have a medium-term expenditure framework.
For what Tinubu wants to do, he spoke to it; I think their Renewed Hope has some hope but the time that party came to power in 2025 with their Change, they changed their mind and they didn’t get anywhere with their Next Level. We are waiting to see whether in four years the people of Nigeria will get what they ordered,” he said.