A former Labour Party (LP) Chieftain, Dr Doyin Okupe, has described President Bola Tinubu administration’s reform agenda as the most credible compared to those of other presidential candidates in the 2023 presidential election.
Okupe, also a former Spokesman to former President Goodluck Johnathan, stated this while assessing Tinubu administration’s reform agenda.
“Though I never supported Tinubu ahead of the election; he is not my friend and we were not in the same party, in retrospect however, his reform agenda is the most credible.
“The Renewed Hope Agenda he (Tinubu) brought is one that can address, and is addressing, the country’s current challenges,” he said.
According to him, the renewed hope agenda is being meticulously applied by the president.
“Tinubu has a better policy document than any of his two rivals during the 2023 presidential election.
“Atiku Abubakar of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is an experienced, knowledgeable and thorough-bred politician.
“I know that for a fact that he also came with a testament that would have been binding on him and Nigerians.
“But when you put the testament side-by-side the current reality on ground, it is not applicable,” the politician said.
He stated that Atiku’s testament, documents and preparations were hinged on some loans which he thought he could use to sort out some things if elected, stressing they were all theoretical.
This, Okupe said, was especially so, because by the time President Muhammadu Buhari was leaving office, no international financial institution was ready to borrow Nigeria money again.
Okupe said that if such institutions were ready to borrow Nigeria money, Buhari wouldn’t have gone to print money just at the tail end of his administration.
“So the premise Atiku placed his testament on was sinking and it can’t work.
“As for Peter Obi of Labour Party, he did not given any document to Nigerians that he was going to work on.
“In Labour Party, we didn’t have a document that we could adopt as a policy document for what was going on.
“All we were saying was that we wanted to take Nigeria from consumption to production; good rethorics, but it was not grounded either in policy development or principle application,” he said.
Okupe noted that the announcement of fuel subsidy removal by Tinubu on his inauguration day was a mere confirmation of an event that had happened under Buhari’s administration.
“Upon assumption of office, Tinubu addressed the issues in the country’s foreign exchange where some people were feeding fat on our foreign exchange earnings, using their contacts in Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN),” he said.
Okupe also noted that Tinubu implemented the student loan and consumer protection programmes, providing loans to low income earners in a systematic manner.
He recalled that the president paid off some debts that were going to cripple the country’s economy.
“Two months after getting into government, he put up a committee to look into tax reform which was in his agenda.
“This man (Tinubu) has a systematic, reliable, focused and applicable agenda that can take Nigeria to enviable heights,” he said. (NAN)
