The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, Prince Adewole Adebayo on Saturday said that despite the enormous challenges facing Nigeria, he would need a maximum of 18 months to kick out poverty from the country and boost economic growth.
While promising to create 30 million jobs if elected president, he also stressed the imperatives of competence, courage and character in the choice of a good president for Nigeria in 2023, saying only a leader with such attributes would help rebuild the country and restore hope to hopeless Nigerians.
The SDP standard bearer in the forthcoming 2023 general election and founder of KAFTAN Television
stated these in an interview with Journalists.
“I have a plan for 30 million jobs and tackle poverty in Nigeria within 18 months. When people have jobs and you put people in school, you create the middle class and solve the problem of poverty. The job comes with accommodation and other incentives then, poverty will go away”, he boasted.
According to him, until there would be honest and purposeful leadership, Nigeria might just still continue to grapple with almost the challenges in the country.
While emphasizing that only the person with capacity and capability can bring the country out of the woods, Adebayo said all the problems, including banditry, continued to fester because of a lack of sincerity of purpose by the nation’s leaders.
He said, “What we call security problem in Nigeria is the regular day-to-day problem. In Nigeria, we have mere skirmishes from bandits Any problem that AK47 can solve is not a problem. The government is not just serious enough to attend to the problem, there is nothing serious, the Nigerian Army is very strong.
“I have done my assessment and I think the Nigerian Army is using two per cent of its attention on Boko Haram because they have seen that it is not the priority of the government.
‘’They have a lot of people who are making money from these things and others say, ‘let me join them because I will soon retire and they won’t pay my pension and this moron here is claiming N1 billion a week, so let me join them.’ That is what is happening. The bandits make money and the security people make money. That is what is happening.’
Adebayo said that those he called the big parties were “big for nothing because they have not been able to solve big problems confronting the country”, be it education, security, energy, electricity and health sectors.
‘’How can you call yourself a big party, when you don’t have big ideas and you cannot solve big issues in the country? They cannot pull the electorate out. In elections, they get about eight per cent of the electorate. If you tell them 40 per cent of the electorate are voting they get worried that they may lose the election”, he said.
He lamented that most of the parties were spending above the limit approved by the electoral body, saying what the parties are doing is criminal.
Adebayo said, ‘’They are spending criminal money. So ideally, the limit set by the Independent National Electoral Commission, any serious political party should be able to meet. Look at the legal limit for spending on the Presidency, we can meet that easily. If only our executives and willing members contribute money we would have a better convention than APC, PDP, more colourful, more quality and we raised the money by ourselves.
“So the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission did have to use their sniffing dogs on our people to find out if they are carrying dollars in their pockets. We had a very good outing, INEC and observers were very impressed.’’
On his antecedents in politics, Adebayo said he does not need to occupy any elective position in the past to learn the ropes of good governance, saying the winner of the 1993 election, late Chief MKO Abiola never occupied any elective position before providing electoral victory for the party.
‘’Your antecedents in politics is not as important as your antecedent in personal life,’’ Adebayo said, adding that “those that have experience about governance in the country have negative experience that must not be sustained because it is anchored in retrogression.’’
