2027 elections: To defeat APC we need new mindset, not new party – Adebayo

By Sunday Ani

The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential elections, Prince Adebayo Adewole, has said that what Nigerians need to defeat President Bola Tinubu and remove the All Progressives Congress (APC) from power in 2027 is a new mindset and not the formation of a new political party.

He stressed that a new party without a new mindset would not end better than the one before it, insisting that a new mindset in the parties, even with the way they are currently structured, would bring about significant progress for the people of Nigeria.

“But the idea of forming a new political party without a new mindset would be a waste of time and resources because if you have a new political party, are you going to form new politicians, a new INEC, a new population of voters, and new media?

“So, let us just understand that political parties are organisations used to canvass and aggregate political opinion, political interest, and political activism. We then use them to canvass solutions to societal problems, and if they give us power, we demonstrate it. But it is not a mechanism to escape the responsibilities of orderly conduct of politics,” he said.

He lamented that President Tinubu’s philosophy has presented him as a monetiser and commoditiser of social services, emphasising that his philosophy is to extract the last penny from every social service in Nigeria.

“So, they will sell education. They will sell healthcare. They will sell citizenship. They will even sell oxygen, if possible. They are behaving like tax collectors, essentially, from head to toe.

“It’s good to collect taxes, but the entire government cannot have the philosophy of a tax collector, and that is what is disturbing them. However, there are certain things you need to put in the economy that look free but have a multiplier effect. Access to water has a multiplier effect on healthcare. Access to food has a multiplier effect on productivity and wellness. Internet access has an impact on creativity, productivity, and the attractiveness of the country. It also has a multiplier effect on security.

“So, these things are lost on them, and that is why we need to give them a lot of reorientation, starting from the president to the vice president, the economic team, and down to the last person in the cabinet of President Tinubu. We need to reorient them to understand that it’s not about money, money, money, collect, collect, collect. You have to let people live with some level of ease and facilitation, then they will become productive,” he stated.

He also decried the government’s sole focus on taxation at the detriment of productivity, saying, “Taxation is now the focus of the government, whereas productivity needs to be their focus. But the fact is that they do not understand that in economics, there is a difference between what makes sense for a company and what makes sense for the larger society. In macroeconomics, you make decisions for the general good of the largest portion of the population, whereas in microeconomics, you make decisions only for the person within your value chain.

“So, they are isolating the government like a company, thinking that the more money the government collects, the more successful the government is. No, a government is a representative of the entire swath of the population. Even if the government is not making as much money, but the GDP is rising, unemployment is going down, and real employment is going up; you can travel faster, safer, and cheaper over time; you can use modern tools to assess wealth; and you can stay in Nigeria and do work that can be exported overseas—that is real progress and development.

“What’s more important today is the ability to export intellectual property. To do that, you need to build an environment that has good electricity and is stable, cheap, and affordable. You need to build an environment that has affordable housing. You need an environment where you can travel long distances at a reasonable cost and can carry goods and services.

“So, if you go around the country, as I did recently, you will see that everywhere is full of trailers, all overloaded. Why are the trailers overloaded? The cost of buying diesel to fuel these vehicles is making the transporters run at a loss. As a result, they make the mistake of overloading their vehicles, which causes accidents, wastage, delays, and traffic congestion.

“So, we need to rethink. And these are the fundamental differences between us and the APC, between me and President Tinubu. These are the points we make clear, and unless we change their minds or we change them from the government, it will be difficult to make that kind of progress,” he concluded.