The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Adewole Adebayo, has described President Bola Tinubu as a tax collector.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, Adebayo noted that President Tinubu deployed tax collection to improve Lagos’ revenue as the Governor and is equally doing the same in Abuja as the nation’s president.
He, however, claimed that Tinubu has managed Nigeria’s economy better than his predecessor, Muhammadu Buhari, and his reforms have improved government revenue.
“Everybody knows that President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a well-known tax collector. But that tax collection is an improvement over a disorganised system he met on ground. He did tax collection in Lagos, and he came to do tax collection in Abuja.
“The problem with Hon. Dogara’s speech is that he is overstating it. This reform is not the best, but it is far better than what we had.
“It’s obvious that the economy that President Buhari left was poorly managed, and was an emergency room patient.
“Like any emergency room patient, the road to recovery will be a good diagnosis by the doctor. So if the doctor is able to know the reason why you are ill, he will be able to put you on a solid path to recovery.
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“What President Tinubu has done is to stabilise the patient, but I’m not sure that he has managed to diagnose the ailment. So the patient is not going to die imminently, but he hasn’t found a cure.
“He hasn’t been able to identify the ailment that is disturbing the patient.
“As an emergency room doctor, he is taking some steps, some of which actually aggravated the case of the patient, but over time, he appears to have one or two wins in two sectors, which is why it appears that they might be deceived into thinking that the patient is on his road to recovery.
“One, he has managed to get more revenue. At least in nominal terms, domestic borrowing that was the feature of President Tinubu’s public finance has reduced,” he said.
“So he’s managed to get some revenue. Of course, because of other wrongheaded policies, that money he’s gotten, in real terms, will not be able to finance a lot of the government spending and infrastructure.
“However, in terms of the balance sheet, Tinubu has managed to have a better balance sheet than Buhari left him.
“The second thing that helped them, which we will know in the long run whether it’s really a good thing to do, was that they rebased inflation.
“So they started counting inflation differently. If they say inflation has dropped to about 20 per cent now from 21 point something per cent last month, it’s not because the economy is performing better, but because the country has changed.
“Let us see what happens by the first quarter of next year, when they are implementing their budget.
“Remember that the 2025 budget doesn’t appear to have come on stream yet, so we won’t be able to know how that works in terms of macroeconomics.
“The third thing that has worked for them is the relative fall in food inflation. So, food inflation has dropped, and food inflation is a major component of the inflation basket,” he said.
“Since the prices of foodstuffs have come down a bit, not that those who are at home are going to feel it, because it hasn’t dropped to the level where they can feel it, but it has dropped in the numbers.
“It’s like someone who’s trying to catch a bag of rice that is placed 10 feet above your car; your hand cannot reach it, but if you drop it to eight feet, your hand still cannot reach it, but it’s lower than before. That’s how it is.
“In a way, the economy is not worse now than it was last year. It is slightly better, but still far away from where it ought to be.”
