The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Barr Adewole Adebayo, has urged President Bola Tinubu to organise politics and governance around the basic needs of Nigerians.
Adebayo said this while speaking with Tribune Online on moves by Tinubu’s administration to re-engineer social security and the welfare of workers and the agitation of organised labour for wage increase.
He stated that he doesn’t share the same ideology with the President because “they are throwing money on non-existent products, that is our point of disagreement.”
He added, “Whether you pay salary or allowance or you pay grants like we did during the Udoji award, you give loans and all that, what is that loan chasing? Remember during the Udoji award, where once you get it, everybody runs to UTC to go and buy bicycles, and the price of bicycles skyrocketed? Meanwhile, in China, if you join the civil service, they will not give you any Udoji award. They will give you bicycles because the bicycles come with the job.
ALSO READ: Fulfil constitutional socio-economic rights of Nigerians , SDP’s Adebayo urges Tinubu
“If you were in the colonial government and you were an assistant district officer, school officer, health officer, forest ranger, or PWD, all these things are tools. When you are getting the job, they will direct you to the staff quarters, this is the school your child should go to.”
Speaking on what could be done better to guarantee a basic supply of education, shelter, and healthcare that people scamper to get, he noted, “We have to organise our politics and government around them. What we are doing now is that we are organizing our politics and government around sharing money. In Abuja, the states go there to share money. The local government under ALGON also go to Abuja to share. The TUC and Labour also go to collect their own share. It is still the principle of sharing money, not sharing value, and not creating anything.
“Remember, if you are talking about stakeholders in the country, labour is superior and senior to the government of the day. I can be president tomorrow, I will still meet labour there because it is a continuity and the social services, everything you want to run to make life easy for labour is to be done by labour members themselves.”
