The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 general election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has berated the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for failing or refusing to wield the big stick against the All Progressives Congress (APC) that continually flouts the electoral law regarding electoral campaign.

He expressed displeasure at the development Saturday when he appeared on Arise TV PrimeTime programme.

He said the law provides that no political party is allowed to start any kind of electoral campaign until 150 days to election, be it by-, off-cycle or general election, but lamented that INEC had kept a blind eye to this provision while the APC flouts it with impunity.

“There’s nowhere you go and you don’t see the picture of President Bola Tinubu and some members of his family already dancing and waltzing ahead of 2027. 

“So, if you are not to be caught panting as an opposition, you would give an answer. If the government was governing, our policies would be in opposition against their governing methods.

“But, since they are campaigning, the opposition has to be in a campaign format. 

“The key issue is that if we want to go back to regular order, the president and the APC have to go back to regular order. Once they go back to regular order, remove all those obnoxious billboards all over the place, we will now listen to them,” he said.

However, he also disagreed with the Director General, World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who recently commended President Tinubu for stabilising Nigeria’s economy.

He noted that Okonjo-Iweala’s statement is only correct in the paradigm of neoliberal economics, as Nigerians only use the feedback from their stomach, energy costs, rent and cost of education, among others to determine the nature of the economy.

He likened the much touted economic stability of the ruling APC to a doctor who mistreated 1,000 patients and when they started dropping dead in dozens, managed to reduce the number of those who are dropping dead to one a week.

“So, you can say you stabilize the situation; it doesn’t mean that the situation is correct. 

“It’s like a pilot who ran into a terrible weather, flew above the level given to him, faced the wrong direction, and now flailing in the storm; has now managed to balance the aircraft. He still has to find his bearing. He still has to find his altitude. He still has to travel towards the original destination. 

“So, what Tinubu has managed to do, is that instead of burning so much money to defend the naira, instead of struggling with the inflation number that doesn’t make their own budgeting to make any sense to themselves, what he’s managed to do is to cleverly cover how much money the CBN is using to defend the naira, to make it look like we can’t see it.

“And because politicians are talking about faction, this and that, nobody’s paying attention to the fact that the CBN is burning our money, which would have been used to provide employment, infrastructure and all of that, to defend the naira and keep it at a level,” he said.

He also tackled the APC-led Federal Government for deceiving Nigerians with wrong inflation figures.

“They went and rebased the statistics so that inflation, which would ordinarily be getting to 38 per cent, is somehow rigged into about 21 or  22 per cent. So, these numbers now make them to be able to communicate to themselves regarding whether their policies make sense.

“But, the Nigerian people are not involved in all of these things. We use the feedback that we get from our stomach, the feedback from energy costs, the feedback from rent, the feedback from cost of education and the feedback between the spending capacities of double-digit, triple-digit wages. 

“So, if you are earning a million naira and you can only buy two tickets for you and your wife to go and see your aging mom in the village and come back and your salary is gone, you know that whatever WTO is saying doesn’t make sense.

“The WTO is not where you get your figure for your economics. It is where you get your figures for trade relations. And if you look at the tariff, being bandied all over the world, everybody’s giving tariff against the other. WTO is not a place where you go now for wise people,” he submitted.

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