The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the last presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo has told Nigerians to bear the luxury and extravagant lifestyles of current political leaders because they asked for it.
Adebayo was reacting to reported plan by the government in the supplementary budget to spend N2.6 billion on utility vehicles for the presidential villa, another N6.2 billion for cars in the villa pool, N5 billion for new cars in the office of the first lady and N5.5 billion to procure a yacht for the president.
He noted that Nigerians voted emperor, and they should not be surprised to get imperial budgets.
“I have said it many times that votes have consequences. If you are voting emperors, you will have imperial budgets. I have said it several times during the campaign that money isn’t the problem of Nigeria, and that whoever says there is no money in Nigeria is lying. It is the kind of government that Nigerians voted for, and that is exactly what they are doing. I also stated that it is the way people campaigned that they would govern. Did the expensive grand campaign they did show that they were coming to govern people who can hardly feed once or twice a day? We have to make up our minds what kind of government we want to run because this is an imperial system that is not supportable by the economic base and not supportable by the average livelihood of the Nigerian people,” he said.
He also described as pedestal the petitions filed by the former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Governor of Anambra State Mr Peter Obi, candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party (LP) in the last presidential elections respectively. He noted that they actually had genuine complaints about the conduct of the elections but stressed that their petitions were a mess. “As a lawyer, Atiku and Obi’s petitions made no sense. There is less than zero chance of succeeding. As a lawyer, the petitions are pedestal and pediatric. Nobody would have listened to them. In actual fact, they have real complaints, but the petitions are a mess,” he said.
He suggested that going forward, the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and not the petitioners should be the one to prove that elections were credibly valid because it is the agency that conducted the elections and knows what happened. “It is INEC’s responsibility to convince the court. If we get to that stage, then it will be better than how we are doing it now. Presently, the burden is on the petitioners. But, if it is the other way round, it is easier because the petitioners won’t have to prove anything. It is closer to justice if the court actually gets to know how the winner became the winner because the errors of the petitioners are enough to throw the petitions away,” he submitted.