APC, PDP are siamese twins, working together- Adebayo

The former presidential candidate of the SDP, Prince Adewale Adebayo, has said the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and the main opposition party, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are not the best for Nigeria in 2027. Adebayo, in this interview with journalists during the week, speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Brazil, PDP presidential zoning to the South, Federal Government policies and other issues. Excerpts 

What do you make of President Bola Tinubu’s visit to Brazil and his assertion that his reforms are working? 

Well, I’m happy that the president is going around the world. I’m happy that he went to Brazil. His going to Brazil is the equivalent of Saul becoming Paul, because in Brazil what the Workers’ Party did to become what they are today and the president was giddy about it; he even posed the question what do they have that we don’t have? And I have the answer. What they have is good leadership and that’s what we don’t have yet. What they have is a poverty reduction manifesto and set of programmes and policies. If you look at Bolsa Familia, which reduced poverty by 27 percent in Brazil in four years under President Lula da Silva’s government, it is the opposite of subsidy is gone that increased poverty exponentially. If you look at the way Petrobras is run compared to the way the president has been running the NNPC, they are polar opposites. If you look at where Brazil gets its strength from, Brazil is the third largest economy in the Americas. In fact, by purchasing power parity, Brazil is next to the USA.

So, they have a bit of mixed economy. The government is participating, the private sector is participating. They have indigenous industries, arising from agriculture, coffee, soybeans and all of that. Then they have the high end with aeronautics, defense and all of that. So, the same country that makes a lot of money producing aircraft like Embraer and other companies is making more money just producing plain soyabeans. So, the economic policy of President Tinubu is opposite the one that has succeeded in Brazil. So, I’m happy that he’s there because by going there; he will see how wrongheaded his own policies are.

On the other hand, I am not happy that he went there to spend all that money when the ruler is here. He could have spoken to me. He could have looked at the Social Democratic Party manifesto. He used to be a member of the SDP in good old days. So, why are you leaving the Brazilian type of manifesto which is available in Nigeria and then you are going to Brazil as a tourist to be in awe of the majesty of Brazil and the Brazilian economy as if it is by magic? It is by policy. Look at them. The Central Bank of Brazil is crying because of 4.5 percent inflation. We are celebrating 22 percent inflation, which in reality is 13 percent. Brazil is having five percent unemployment. We are having over 30 or 40 percent, depending on how you look at the statistics.

Agreed that the reforms are the bitter pills that signpost good health when the medicine starts working. Are the realities and the promises or the hopes that are being preached in tandem? What exactly do you think is going on?

Okay, let me tell you, there is a doctor, Bola Tinubu, who has an APP hospital, and he says he treats malaria patients.
So, he makes sure the fever is gone. What does he do? If you take a patient there, he gives the patient rat poison. So, the patient would die, and the fever would die with the patient. That’s one way that he cures his own patients.
So if he has plenty patients and 15 of them die, he will say I have only five fever patients left. That is not the best way to cure a patient. It’s not every medicine that is going to cure a fever, that’s number one. Number two, he went to the wrong country. He should have gone to Argentina, because his own policy is closer to the one done in Argentina, not the one being done in Brazil. Thirdly, the problem is not breaking the egg.

You can ask women, how do you make an omelette? The easiest part is breaking the egg. You break the egg, and all the yolk and the white of the egg spills to the ground. If you break the egg, at that time you have no frying pan; you have not even lit the fire. So how are you going to make the omelet? So the problem is that half of our eggs are broken, and nobody has had breakfast. You keep breaking the egg, you don’t see the omelette.

Are you saying  this government is not doing the right thing? 

I am not just saying that President Tinubu’s government is not doing the right thing. There are some governments that don’t do the right thing. But I’m saying that they are not just doing the right thing, they are actively doing the bad thing. And the reason I’m able to say that, is that the president may disagree with the policy of the SDP. We raised the issue of farewell to poverty and insecurity, and we said you have to make social investment. And we said that you can grow your GDP by making social investment. He is trying to grow his own GDP by making social divestment and hoping that Brazilians, because I heard him calling Petrobras to come here, he is hoping that Brazilians, other people who have made social investments at home, and have redeveloped that social investment, are going to bring their own money to come and make foreign investment here. The policy is wrong.

The third reason I think the policy is wrong is that after criticizing the SDP or ignoring the SDP manifesto here, he is praising Brazil. So Brazil is the benchmark for today’s discussion. The journey of poverty must be inversely correlated with the journey of economic growth.So, if you grow your economy, poverty must reduce. How do you reduce poverty? There are three ways to reduce poverty. One, you do immediate employment for people.You have to configure most of your policies to include employment. Second, you do social investment such as housing, health care, education, infrastructure, and basic infrastructure for people. Thirdly, you must have systems in place for macroeconomic management, and you cannot cheat in that kind of examination.

You must immediately tell the Governor of Central Bank, gentlemen, meet to Minister of Finance, by the middle of my term, I want inflation to be single-digit.
If you can’t do it, leave my job, let me find somebody else because you have to make inflation to be single-digit. You have to reduce unemployment to single-digit.
You must look at those two things, and you must increase productivity. So agricultural productivity is coming down, unemployment is rising, inflation is rising, and poverty is blooming. And then you go to Brazil and say, God loves Brazil than us.

Ahead of the 2027 election, politicking has begun in earnest. You saw what the PDP has done by zoning the presidential ticket to the south. What is your initial view when you heard that news?

Well, that’s what they should have done in 2023, because there is a popular demand that there should be equity in the country. So, they have this, at least from the elitist point of view, they have this north-south rotation that they’re doing. So, my only concern is that when it goes to the north, they bring the worst person. When it comes to the south, they also bring the worst person. But if it can be done positively, that when it goes to the north, they bring the best person, so you are voting for them not just because they are from the north, but because they are good for the job. And if it’s the turn of the south, you look for the best candidate also. So, I think, the party can correct its mistake, because the idea of rotation actually came from PDP. They were the ones who brought the idea of turn by turn Nigeria Limited, as Chief Body Judge would call it. So, now that they are finally finding their way, they should not assume that that’s the only problem Nigerians have with them.

The problems we have with them is not just the north-south issue, it is the 16 years of bad governance. The luck that PDP has is that as bad as their government was, APC managed to equal them or even top them in mismanagement. Otherwise, Nigerians were not happy with the 16 years of PDP, and I think we haven’t forgiven them. So, it’s good that they’ve done this rotation thing, so to make it easier for them to allow people to more substantive arguments as to how to run the government. But I don’t think Nigerians want to see PDP in power.

Finally, those who say the zoning to the south by the PDP just gave an easy answer or a quicker route for Bola Tinubu and the APC to clinch the election or win the election in 2027. What do you make of that?

Well, who is going to vote for President Tinubu in 2027 with all this suffering, with all the fake promises? President Tinubu said, don’t vote for me if I don’t give you electricity. Has he given it? He said: “I know the job; the job is tough. Let me do what I want to do. If you don’t like it, at the end of the four years, don’t vote for me.” So, I don’t think if things remain the way they are in 2027, President Tinubu, in good conscience, should be surprised if he’s massively voted out. Nigerians have suffered enough. His policies are not working and it’s not about us. Beside PDP and APC, Nigerians have better options. So, it’s not compulsory that if the PDP commits suicide, automatically, the APC inherits the politics. No, what we know is that APC and PDP are like Siamese twins. They are the same company now. They work together.

Nigerians want alternative politics. We are looking for a new direction. That’s what people are saying; new direction.
People are talking about a new direction now. There’s nothing new about PDP. Definitely, there’s nothing new about APC.
We’ve done change. We’ve done next level. Now, we are in serious suffering.
So, I think we need to understand that Nigerians have options. But if by 2027, something changes in terms of macroeconomics, in terms of security, in terms of poverty, in terms of employment, then President Tinubu becomes competitive. But the way it is now, I don’t think that for the good of the country, even for the good of the President himself, he should just go home and thank God that he’s the President for four years.