The presidential aspirant under the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has promised to make full disclosure of where the country’s money is, on the day he is sworn in as the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

He said Nigeria’s money has been shrouded in mystery for too long and one of the things that the people of Nigerians will know when he gets where their money is.

Prince Adebayo said there is too much mystery about Nigerian money and even President Buhari cannot tell you how much money Nigeria has.

“Board members of NNPC, now NNPL, don’t know how much the company has, Minister of finance does not know where government money is but you all will have a full forensic of where your money is once I get into office.”

He further noted that he is one of the many Nigerians who are not too excited about the pomp and pageantry that heralded the Federal Government’s new Nigeria National Petroleum Limited, NNPL, formally NNPC, as according to him, the change of name without a change of mind will not lead to any result.

“If there is no change of circumstances, change of mind on the part of those running it, it will amount to the same result. It is the corporate culture and governance that must be there to make it functional. I will review a lot of it when I become president. I will remove the aspect of controlling and negotiating and collecting revenue on behalf of the government. They have gone too far in this collection of revenue.

“The president’s recent order on ASUU strike is just an order that has no content. I think this new mandate given to the minister is quite too late. It’s better than nothing though but my fear is whether the minister will be able to act on it because he should know that this is one of the worst crises a country can go through and he doesn’t need the president to order him to deal with it. Ordinarily, one should have heard that the minister is fired. I think the president is to be blamed for this. The president has children, his children have friends, his ministers have children. So, he is not living under a rock.

“He knows ASUU is on strike, giving a two-week ultimatum to his minister now is more of a later-day theatre. The ASUU crisis is supposed to have been resolved because their demands are not new, they are old demands, the same demands as when I was an undergraduate at Ife. I don’t think ASUU will change anything in their demands, it will be unpatriotic to do so.”

He added that Nigeria’s over-dependence on oil is because of the ingenuity of the leaders, explaining that petroleum, during his reign as president, especially his first year, will be in the withdrawal zone.

“Nigeria makes about $20 million from ginger. Even in a good year, we don’t gross up to 120m dollars a year. If only we invest a little more to squeeze our ginger and get ginger oil, we will be making 1.4b dollars from ginger oil. If you go into the value chain of some of the produce, you will see that petroleum isn’t a big deal.

“At the peak of Jonathan’s tenure when the oil price was above 100 dollars and everybody was clapping, I wasn’t really impressed because I have an oil palm plantation where I was selling my palm oil at 660 dollars per barrel. This was why Micheal Opara created the Ada palm in the Eastern region. I am not the kind of president who is running for office because of NNPL. Presidency under me won’t share oil money.

“Rather, I will put the federal government allocation of the money into the sovereign fund and then dedicate it to building hospitals all over the place. I am not going to mainstream oil money into my budget. The present generation has spent enough of oil money, we need to keep it for the future,” he said.

Speaking further on vote buying, “he said it amounts to selling the future of your children. I am not saying political parties or contributors who are rich cannot spend their money. But spend your money on legitimate things. Do bigger rallies, do advertising, etc. Anybody who can sell their votes are the people who will eventually collaborate with bandits and take sides with armed robbers.”

(Saturday Independent)

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