Prince Adewole Ebenezer Adebayo ran the February 25, 2023 presidential election on the Social Democratic Party, SDP. He was one of the proponents of pro-subsidy.
In this interview, Prince Adebayo explains that government should liberalise the energy sector to give room for more efficient and effective power in the country and also slams the federal government for concessioning some public assets to individuals. TOPE SUNDAY reports
What’s your take on fuel subsidy removal?
From what I know, especially for someone who took an opposite view when we started the campaign, President Bola Tinubu said he was going to remove subsidy during the campaign. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar also said he was going to remove same. When they said that, I told myself that these people, with that kind of statement, that they have lost the election. Peter Obi also came around during the campaign that he was going to remove subsidy. So, I said Nigerians would reject these three people but it turned out that majority of the votes went to them.
For us that do not agree that removing subsidy is the best solution, we cannot come now and pretend that election hadn’t taken place. The people have chosen. No matter what you think about it, the voters didn’t mind them to remove the subsidy or they encouraged these three people to remove subsidy. The only contribution we can make to the discussion is to see how do Nigerians live well, locomote well and grow the economy without the subsidy. There are still subsidies in other areas but this fuel subsidy is gone now.
The discussion going on now around the government with the unions is not to remove the subsidy but to see how the government can manage the fallout of the removal. With the removal, it will not cure the problem they want it to cure as time goes on. But as a leader and someone who ran for office, I have no moral authority to criticise a man who says what he would do . You don’t criticise a man for keeping to his word. Just live with it.
As it stands, is there any alternative to removing subsidy?
Of course, there is. We need to audit the subsidy money to see that it is not all the money we spent in the name of subsidy. I thought we had capacity to audit properly and meter at every stage. We have capacity to get our legacy refineries to work and any other commercial refinery that anyone establishes like that of Dangote. You cannot force them to sell their products because they would be unwise to ignore the marketers around them. You have modular refineries you can create. More so, all monies in government is unified.
There is no one door to solving an economy problem. But they have taken one liberal door to solve it. Hopefully, their partners in IMF and World Bank and International community will cooperate with them.
Don’t you think that unintended benefits would come later along the way?
We knew how much we consume. It’s just that we didn’t want to acknowledge it. To acknowledge, then you will see that people are taking the money away. That is why labour unions complained the other time that they don’t know how much we consume and things like that. The people working at the Atlas cove, pipelines, gas stations, tank farms, different stations across the country, are they not members of your unions, are they not the first to know what comes into the country?
All dispensers are metered. If you know how much you consume at the meter point, then your problem is solved. It is not that difficult to know how much we consume and how much is frittered away.
I know subsidy is hard and as a person that may go to the people tomorrow for support for votes, but the truth of the matter is that you (the people) removed the subsidy. I warned you that you shouldn’t try it but it has been done now. You have to take the injection with the pain, hopefully, the malaria would be cured.
Instead of quarreling with government over subsidy which is already gone, you allowed it to go. We must start to hold the feet of government to fire.
Today, fuel price is 470. In 6 months’ time, you are bringing it to 700. No, float it since you have decided to take the bullet for that one but make sure there is competition so that people don’t end up having ability to choke supply because that is what end up with other products that have been freed. NNPCL must get out of importation business. Don’t rig the market. Allow everybody to bring their product to the market place. I don’t want government to fix the price. NAFDAC doesn’t import drugs, it only regulates. NNPCL should liberalise it. The business of bringing fuel into the country should be between the oil marketers and their bankers.
The President talked about interest rates and the forex market. These are purely monetary issues resting squarely with the CBN. What do you have to say about it?
If you studied APC renewed hope manifestos, you won’t be surprised at what is playing out presently, because these are clearly what they said they were going to do. Of course, there have been some contradictions. For example, if you say you want to unify the exchange rates and that is if you allow the market to determine it, you can pretend that you don’t know much about the market and say the dollar is 500. Then people won’t bring their dollar out. So, what we call dual exchange rate is what government says is selling exchange rate and what another person sells his own. So, the only way the government can unify the market is selling its own dollar at the market rate because government cannot force me to sell my dollar to them at their own official rate.
How and where do you think government is going to get the funding you enumerated now, giving the fact that consistently the earnings of government have been nosediving?
Two fishermen going to the same sea doesn’t mean they will catch the same amount of fish because the fishing skill of one would reflect. Two farmers farming next to each other will not have the same yields as the farming skill of each farmer will reflect in the output. What you get out of government depends on who you put in government. Nigeria is a rich country. There is enough money to take care of all of us. There is no doubt about that. The resources are there and it is now left for the government, if they are efficient, whether they want to collect all their revenues.
Now, the government must be a promise keeper because it is the government that is distorting the economy because government will issue a contract to a contractor and the contractor will, in turn, go and collect loan from banks, government will default in their payment, the contractor too will default to the bank and then government comes again, gives money to AMCON to buy back the bad debt. All these will have to go away. And they should stop concessioning government assets to private people.
When the late Chief Raymond Dokpesi founded AIT, he didn’t take over NTA. He only bought licence to create AIT. When Igbinedion University was created, why didn’t they concession University of Benin to Chief Igbinedion? I don’t believe we should be concessioning government property to anyone. President Obasanjo said the Port Harcourt Refinery should be given to Aliko Dangote to run but Yar’Adua said no. Now, it has paid off for Dangote as he now has his own refinery and yet the Port Harcourt refinery is still intact. Chances are that if he had been given the Port Hacourt refinery, he wouldn’t have created the Dangote refinery today. Mother of all, do well with Infrastructure. That’s one area President Buhari, in spite of his one trillion faults, when it came to investing in infrastructure, he focused on it to the best of his ability, he focused on that.
These people that came now, I believe they have better ability than him but they should not forget that investing in infrastructure- rail line, better airport, expand the sea port because ability to travel round the country, ability to carry good and services cheaply round the country, ability to move round the clock and that is why the issue of security should be dealt with decisively. I think Buhari started well on the issue of power generation and distribution which he removed from exclusive list to the concurrent list. They should further liberalise it to make sure that all this DisCos that just collect money without power, goes away, so that we can have a proper energy market.
Is the country’s N46.2 trillion debt profile an encumbrance to the renewed hope?
I am more nuanced when it comes to debt. It’s not the load that kills, it is how you carry the load. Government debt cannot kill the government. Three things to look out for about the debt. What did you use the debt for? The structure of the debt; what are the terms of the debt and the tenor of the debt? You also look at the issue of productivity. When you say your debt is high relative to your GDP but so if you increase your revenue and your GDP, your debt will comparatively fall.
