The presidential flagbearer of the Social Democratic Party of Nigeria commonly known as the SDP for the forthcoming 2023 Presidential elections, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has highlighted self-destructive politics as the major limiting factor stalling Nigeria’s industrialization.
Speaking during an interactive session with journalists in his residence in Abuja, he contended that Nigeria has all it takes to become fully industrialised, however, politicians who benefit from crisis situations keep stalling Nigeria’s emancipation.
According to him, we can industrialize the country; we have the money and roadmap to do it and Moreso better than our ancestors like Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe and Chief Obafemi Awolowo. We can industrialise. The advantage is that in Nigeria today, if we get unemployment to single digit, you don’t even need to solve all the problems of Nigerians. If we get unemployment to 9 per cent because if you get everybody employed the rest will take care of itself.
“When we got independence, our leaders started our industrialization from two angles and they got these two angles right. One we started from value addition, if you are exporting raw cocoa, you can start a cocoa processing plant factory here…. From groundnuts we make groundnut oil factories like Lever Brothers.
“The second angle is import substitution, things that are simple that you import, you will now substitute them with local production. Usually, you start with the person importing them, to say we can allow you to import to this extent then you’ll have to build a factory here. This is what the Indian’s deploy.
“Then, you create infrastructure, that is why we are building dams to generate electricity and all of that then we do highways, rail lines and all of that. So, when we have all these on ground then the people will use infrastructure to now create other industries on their own,” Adabayo said.
He, however, pointed out that the solutions to Nigeria’s problems are there but they are not being applied because it is gainful to those who are in charge.
“I have to tell you what needs to be done, how it can be done and why it is not being done. The original problem/set back is that the state governments share local government fund which they can use to set up small scale industries.
“Local government can generate employment in their neighbourhood by setting up crafts, small scale industries/cottage industries and then the states can set up medium sized industries then federal and state government can face infrastructure,” he stated.
The SDP presidential aspirant asserted the need for Nigeria to organize its politics around the idea that in the upcoming 2023 election, the nation must have a change of heart, a new politics where citizens want to solve their problems.
“And since these problems are not from God. God has blessed this country to the point where God can be accused of biased, everything is perfect. Water, light, housing, everything is in Nigeria. If everyone decided to go on holiday not to work for one day, we will still be rich. If every Nigerian signed a contract that we will not work for 100 years, we will just put a collector, people will come and take our crude oil, dig gold, farm and pay us because the country is very rich.
“So, if you are the enemy of yourself and you do not want to address the fact that you are the enemy of yourself and the self-destruction is taken into our politics and we continue engaging in self-destructive politics how then will you blame anyone. And we need to address this issue,” he maintained.
The SDP presidential flagbearer, Prince Adewole Adebayo, however, said his mission, if elected as the president of Nigeria, is to make putting the right people in government a priority, people who will say this is not good and there’s a need to change it sincerely and genuinely, adding that if he becomes the president, he is going to faithfully implement the chapter 2 of the Nigeria constitution which has social welfare, which means that water, food, housing, education, healthcare and others need to be made available because the country can afford them and all citizens need to enjoy such.
