Mr Adewole Adebayo, Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) has said economic diplomacy will help tackle insecurity in Nigeria through stimulating job-creating growth and development.
Adebayo said this on Monday in Lagos while delivering a paper at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA) platform for presidential candidates in the 2023 general elections.
According to Adebayo, economic diplomacy is largely intended to support the SDP’s priority of ending poverty.
“There is need to eradicate poverty but the whirlwind of insecurity blowing across the land makes it imperative that the former be fought alongside insecurity.
“When communities are not secured from banditry and terrorism, fighting poverty would be a wild goose chase.
“This is because farmers have deserted their farms or are made to pay taxes to bandits to enable them plant and harvest crops,” he said.
The SDP presidential candidate said that he adopted ‘farewell to poverty and insecurity’ as the appropriate domestic policy for the country in his campaign slogan.
“The slogan is a revised version of that of the party’s first Presidential Candidate, late Chief Moshood Abiola.
“His policy agenda in the 1993 presidential election was simply titled: farewell to poverty,” he said.
He said that economic diplomacy would be the guiding framework of his foreign policy, adding that it would entail several variables.
“These variables include accountability and husbandry of all natural and human resources of Nigeria in line with chapter 2 of the 1999 Constitution,” he said.
The candidate said it would also include eradication of poverty and abolishing corruption in the country’s public life.
“These hopefully would result to accountable, respectable and ethical government at all levels of governance in Nigeria,” he said.
Adebayo noted that as a patron to the NIIA, he would fund the institute to conduct policy research in line with his foreign policy direction.
“We are in a world where might is right and international laws are breached with impunity by powerful nations.
“Nigeria should be pursuing a realistic foreign policy aimed at boosting its power status in the international system,” he said.
The theme of the platform was: ‘The world of Nigeria and Nigeria in the world: foreign policy as an adjunct of domestic priorities.’