The Minister of Solid Minerals Development, Dele Alake, has said Nigeria needs President Bola Tinubu beyond 2027 for the consistency and continuity of positive reforms introduced by the administration.
Alake, the Lead Spokesperson of the 2027 All Progressives Congress (APC) Presidential Campaign Council, stated this during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Wednesday.
He stressed that Tinubu’s economic reforms, especially the removal of the fuel subsidy, which has a far-reaching effect of freeing up resources for infrastructure development and meeting other government responsibilities at all levels, deserve protection by re-electing the president in the 2027 polls.
According to Alake, Tinubu took the bullets for removing the subsidy, which was hitherto the big elephant in the country’s economic room, despite being fully aware that the action would have repercussions on his re-election bid.
He said Nigerians knew what the economy was before the coming on board of the present administration in 2023, and all the reforms and the policies that were necessary to correct “these distortions and contradictions in the Nigerian society were there and identifiable by those previous governments,” but they lacked the courage to take those decisions.
“If a man who is a politician himself, who should be very sensitive to elections coming back to office, decided to take the bullet, regardless of the consequences on his own political career, on behalf of the nation, because the nation had to be reset, I think it’s just very, very important for us to appreciate that. And that is the kind of person that Nigeria needs for consistency.
“Yes, those hard decisions have been taken. The hard decisions, as I said, must have their own attendant challenges. There’s no government policy anywhere in the world that is 100% foolproof, especially when it has to do with human beings.
“Like I always say, human beings are the most difficult factor of economic production or economic progress. What are the factors of production? Land, capital, and all that machinery. But the most difficult to manage is labour, because labour means human beings,” Alake stated.
He also said there are some individuals in society who were benefiting from the negative system that had brought the country to its knees, such as the fuel subsidy.
Alake insisted that: “the beneficiaries of the fuel subsidy were the oil cartels. They would buy the fuel at a lower price, cross the border, immediately make humongous profits and come back to Nigeria to oppress the rest of us.
“Those people were benefiting from it, and so when the fuel subsidy was removed, did you think that they would fold their arms and be looking? No, they will fight back, they will push back, and they are fighting back, and they are pushing back.”
He recalled that before the Tinubu administration and the removal of the fuel subsidy, more than half of the states could not pay salaries, while the federal government was borrowing to meet those obligations.
“I recall more than 18 states, if not more, I’m sure more, could not meet up with the wages. Some who were trying were paying maybe half salary or a quarter, or spreading the salaries and stuff like that.
