The presidential candidate of Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the February 25 poll, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has asked President Bola Tinubu to lead by example in the drive to use compressed natural gas (CNG) for automobiles.
According to him, citizens would not be encouraged to utilize CNG if the president and other government officials drove their vehicles on fuel.
He noted that instead of coming up with a clear policy on the issue of the CNG, the government was just bickering.
“There is no white paper; it’s just mere announcements. I don’t think this is how to run a government in this 2023 era. We didn’t even run the government like that in 1953. I think what the government should do is articulate its programmes for poverty alleviation. Let them present a white paper and set a target so that we can monitor that.
“There are three ways they can handle the impacts of subsidy. They can provide alternatives, which is the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) that they are talking about. If they can focus on that, you could get one million conversions in one year. If that is what you want to do, you come out and focus on it. Again, the first example one would notice is that the government has not in itself converted its own vehicles to CNG. If the government vehicles are still running on petrol and they want the people to be on Compressed Natural Gas, CNG, then there is a problem,” he added
He also noted that the Tinubu administration, rather than focusing on the economy, is only focusing on how to settle down.
“They have made two policies. The first one is affirming the policy of the Buhari administration and the APC that they would remove subsidies from petrol. They have done that, and the attendant cost-push inflation is already coming in. Secondly, they harmonised the foreign exchange market. But, in terms of focusing on the economy, they have not; they are only focusing on how to settle down,” he said.
Speaking on the N5 billion palliative to each of the 36 states in the federation, he equally said it would amount to nothing lamenting that the problem with the government is intervening in certain issues without looking back to the history of how such a problem was successfully tackled in the past.
“This idea of a handout where you give one mudu of rice is not sustainable. What the government needs to do is to create a certain fund, go out and deal with how to bring the prices of things down instead of giving handouts in the name of palliative to the citizenry,” he stated.
