You’re living your dream as president, let Nigerians live theirs, Jandor tells Tinubu

The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the 2023 general elections in Lagos State, Dr. Abdul-Azeez Adediran, also known as Jandor, has urged President Bola Tinubu to see to the well-being of Nigerians while living his dream as the country’s leader.

Adediran made the call while addressing the press on the state of the nation, and hosting members of his campaign council and non-partisan individuals who supported the JANDOR4Governor project in the 2023 election.

Speaking to the media, Jandor said: “You (Tinubu) are living your dream. You want to be President and now you are President of Nigeria, you are living your dream.

“Nigerians too want to live their own dream. I ask myself, what is really happening?

“You cannot run a government as if you are running a profit-making organization. You are only there for one purpose: to see to the well-being of the people.

“Today people are crying. When I see the approach, I am like, no, this is not it. Government comes forward to say, open this for people. No. You are getting it all wrong.

“You don’t have shortage of food in Nigeria. There is food in the market, but they are expensive, people cannot afford it. That’s the thing.”

Speaking on the removal of fuel subsidy, Jandor said that the President took a wrong approach.

He said: “Imagine removing the fuel subsidy the first day. I think the first thing to do if you are elected, even if you have your own plans, is to get to the office first and read the handover notes by the previous president.

Read also: NASS, not Tinubu, ‘padded’ 2024 budget by N1.2trn – Presidency

“There, you would have seen the reason this man did not remove it or he is still waiting or pushing it to June as the case may be.

“He should have waited to have a cabinet even if it is a small one or an advisory committee to sit with them in order to know what to do because right from the day, May 29, that he went there and said subsidy is gone, the market started reacting to it immediately and we know where we are.

“I think the immediate solution is to press a reset button and say let’s start afresh.

“On what they needed to do, I expected that all this national minimum wage meeting that is going everywhere would have come first because we are going to be removing the subsidy and we know the moment we do that, that will reduce the buying power of the people.

“And what we then need to do is to see how we can shore it up. “If tomorrow they decide to say we are going to pay N100,000 or what have you as minimum wage, who is going to cover for the one year loss on the side of the people?”

On the Oronsaye report, he said: “I just think that there is crisis in the land. Right from Jonathan’s days, all of them wanted to implement this report, and just like somebody said, this report can’t work again.

“This is because from the time when this report came out, how many government parastatals do we have today? Now it’s triple. Even as they are even going about promoting the report, the National Assembly is passing South-East Development Commission. That is an additional agency of government coming up.

“So, I think if they really want to do this, they should be able to tell us in clear terms the amount of money that we’ll be saving. I think the government at the federal level will need to go back.

“Recently, the President did a broadcast and he said he’s going to set up N75 billion for medium scale enterprises. Between that time and now, this is March 2024, I don’t know who has benefited from that and everybody is still shouting.

“There is so much knee-jerk approach. Just last week, Mr. President was in Qatar to market Nigeria, to tell people come and invest in this country, at the same time, existing investors in the country, we are telling them if you don’t pay particular levy, you’re going to do this or that.

“As a businessman, if I want to go anywhere to do business, all I need to do is go online and check what is happening to the people there as I speak. If I see this is how you are treating them, I won’t bring my money into your economy,”Jandor said.

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