Former presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has characterized President Bola Tinubu’s economic team as disorganized and lacking fundamental economic understanding.
Addressing the present economic challenges in the country, Adebayo hopes that the 2025 budget by President Tinubu works.
He, however, expressed that the current administration under President Bola Tinubu is afflicted by economic ignorance.
He expressed his hope for a brighter future for Nigeria but emphasized that it is not a positive sign when the finance minister considers a day of borrowing in London to be favourable.
Adebayo criticized the Minister of Finance, Wale Edun, for asserting that the economy is performing well despite significant external borrowing.
The politician questioned how it could be deemed a good day when Nigeria seeks foreign investments in the capital market based on surplus production.
He noted that no previous minister would have claimed that a day of borrowing was a good day.
When informed about other advanced countries like America that also borrow, Adebayo said: “America borrows from within. You borrow from your own currency. I am not quarrelling with them, borrowing from the currency they issued. When you are borrowing Euro bonds, borrowing currency from other people in other capitals of the world, it’s a sign of crisis.
“Yes, you can do it, but you don’t say it’s a good day for you. If you are anaemic and your neighbour comes to donate blood to you, you should be grateful, but you don’t say that’s the best day of your life because you are not supposed to be anaemic in the first place.
“They need to run the economy in such a way that we can generate capital for ourselves. Fundamentally, I think they are uncoordinated. Even though he is supposed to be the coordinator of the economy, he is not coordinated.
“The thinking isn’t coordinated, but if they coordinate well and work with us as a population, we should be able to generate wealth for the country.”
Tinubu Govt Suffering From Economic Illiteracy
Speaking further on the current economic challenges in Nigeria, Adebayo said: “The parameters are a bit basic and elementary. Even in those basic elementary parameters, they are not sincere about them. They don’t want to meet them because they are not realistic.
“The exchange rate they fixed is unrealistic.
“Given the other measures they have taken, I think it is the lack of coordination that concerns me. I wish that Tinubu’s 2025 budget works.
“I want them to succeed. I want investors to come to Nigeria. I plead with anyone to have confidence in the economy of Nigeria. That is my desire, even though I am in the opposition. However, they are self-contradictory as these contradictions would, at the end of the day, prove themselves.
“For example, in their mind, if they are able to succeed, they are working towards 15 per cent inflation, but any basic micro-economist knows that you must never have double-digit inflation.
“It is one thing to have a high BP, and the doctor tells you he will only give you medium BP; the doctor wants to kill you because his job is to return your BP to normal. The objective they set, even if they succeed, is a failure on its own.”
Adebayo noted: “I saw the minister, and I heard him, and I understood his philosophy. I am not against him in person. I like him as a finance person who can manage your assets, like a merchant banker.
“There are two things you need to do with the type of our size of development. First is the fiscal and budgetary housekeeping. The government budgets for itself in the first part of the budget.
“Then, the second part of the budget signals to the rest of the economy, creates a stimulus for areas they want to emphasize and then uses other incentives to encourage others to invest. They are sending the wrong signals.
“First, in their own housekeeping, they are wrong in the way they are going about it. You can never say to anybody, especially somebody who understands basic microeconomics, that your inflation rate cannot be lower than your unemployment rate. You can do it.
“You have already got it upside down. If you have a 15 per cent inflation rate, definitely, your unemployment cannot go below 15 percent because of the way you run the economy.”
“If you listen to the gentleman again, he painstakingly celebrated the idea that they have 25 million households that they are trying to give little money to.
“Why don’t you have 25 million households from whom you are going to give employment? So, you have a social register for people you want to give money but you don’t have a register of unemployed people that you can give jobs to. What sense does it make?
“The idea that you are going to imagine manufacturing by thinking that if you give ₦50,000 to any enterprise, whether small, medium or micro, is invisible; ₦50,000? If the person comes to your office to collect the money, he will spend about that on transportation.
“If you say you want to grow the economy by bringing investors, don’t you understand that borrowing money in the bank is just one of the factors of production?
“Loan capital, for example, won’t you realize that there are other paper expenditures like labour cost, infrastructure cost, and other costs. If you are driving those costs above sustainability, there is no way you can generate employment or capital in the economy,” he said.
