Adewole Adebayo, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), has said that he would create thirty million jobs using new technologies like crypto and blockchain if elected president in 2023.
Adebayo, who made a guest appearance at Channels TV Sunday Politics, said that his objective, which aligns with the manifestos of the party, was to reduce unemployment and drive economic growth in the nation.
He identified the crux of the nation’s problem as unemployment and argued that using government intervention to create jobs was ineffective and not strong enough to deal with the problem.
“When I went to Washington in June, I discovered that if I am going to make anything happen in terms of dealing a heavy blow on poverty, apart from government intervention, we must create jobs,” he said.
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He further stressed that “the surest way to get poverty kicked out is to ensure that people can get gainful employment. These empowerment interventions are meant for those who you cannot employ.
He made an illustration to buttress his point further, arguing that it is not a smart move for any government to give empowerment instead of employment. “You cannot see a vibrant young person; instead of giving them employment, you are giving them empowerment.” It doesn’t work. What you do is give jobs to those who can do them. For the elderly, those who are retired, those who are sick, and those who have no ability to work, those are the people you use other social methods for.
He added that depending on public expenditure was not strong enough to create jobs. “I realised that if we are to rely on our public expenditure alone, we cannot create these jobs.” What I did was to go to the US Black Chamber of Commerce and the National Chamber of Commerce in the US—people who know me well and whom I have worked with. “I am a board adviser for some of them, and I have gone around the world with them on job creation,” he said.
“I told them, ‘Look, you know we have done these things before in many countries, and I have been your adviser, and we have done all of these things. In my country, I know the objective conditions that we can create for you to come to Nigeria, and we can create jobs.”
“We sat down together and we looked at it in various sectors — agro-allied, alternative energy, infrastructure, health, and social services — and new technologies such as block chain and crypto technology — we discovered that we can create three million jobs times 10 to 30 million jobs by using 2,000 companies and bringing the production that they are doing into the country.”
