Creating strong institutions will limit the excesses of government – Prince Adebayo
Emmanuel Alfred
The Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo says his administration will target building strong institutions that will help to curb the excesses of the government.
He made this bold statement as a guest at a Town Hall Meeting tagged, “Building Nigeria’s Steel, Petrochemical and Agroallied Industry organized by Media giants Arise Television.
He said this wasn’t new as it was part of the first development plan of 1960-1965 which was drafted by the then Prime Minister, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa.
Prince Adebayo added that these plans gave birth to establishment of the Ajaokuta Steel Plant, Ajala Steel and others as part of the “import substitution policy” targeted at reducing importation of those minerals.
He also said the achievements of the First Republic was due to discipline by public officers, clear set out goals and also a strong Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
The legal luminary said that the CBN was so strong that the then Governor of the Bank prevented the then Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon from taking money to procure ammunitions during the Civil War.
“Now we have a CBN that is too weak to stand against the government of the day and a large chunk of the money realized from Crude oil sales are stolen without being accounted for”. He added
On the solutions to it, he said: “we have the answer already but I need to create a government that will make things work. And to make it work, the monetary policy will be such that the CBN is absolutely in charge of money supply, money pricing and inflation.”
“My government will also be accountable to the citizens as regards money spent. We will also create project management where decaying and uncompleted projects will be sorted out.”
“We will do this by creating an economy that will attract investments to complete those projects and give us a stable exchange rate.”
He also promised to create a viable social structure that will thrive on the intellect, keep inflation at single digits and reduce unemployment rate in the country.
