Ahead of the 2027 presidential elections, a chieftain of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the party’s 2023 presidential candidate, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has declared that what Nigeria needs are fresh leaders with fresh ideas on how to bring the country out of the woods and not old, clueless and expired political elites who have sunk the country into the current economic quagmire.
In this interview, he spoke about the current political situation in the country, with particular reference to the defection of almost all the governors and a handful of national assembly lawmakers to the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, among other national issues. Excerpts!
The APC is retaining dominance in the governance of the country, at least with the number of governors in its kitty. Is this not shrinking the opposition in Nigeria, especially as we move towards the 2027 general election?
There is no shrinking of opposition space. It all depends on what you think, whether you think democracy is about public office holders alone or about politicians alone. The way democracy is supposed to work and that is how it is going to work in Nigeria, is that it is the majority sentiment or tendency among the Nigerian electorate that will determine the state of our democracy and the direction of the country.
The idea that we can play the politics of incumbency, which is basically what they are doing by counting the ratio of the incumbent governors, won’t work. I am not aware of any democracy that is healthy anywhere in the world, where you have an opinion poll and it is counting how many senators or counting how many governors. Usually, what you count is whether the people of the country are more hopeful about the future than they were before; whether they approve the performance of the government of the day or not; whether they side with the government of the day on key issues or they side with the opposition and where they will likely vote on certain issues.
The media should stop being obsessed with the incumbent. They should try to hear from the ordinary people because it doesn’t matter how many governors you have borrowed or snatched; what matters is whether the people feel better about governance. Do they feel properly led by those who are in power and do they wish to go the direction the president is taking them, or the governor of each state is taking them? Those are the issues we should be talking about. If you look in those directions, the government of the day and all the incumbents are in serious trouble.
How do you feel about the fact that the SDP is not part of the ADC that is merging with other parties to challenge the APC in 2027?
It’s not relevant to me because it’s all part of your television narrative, it is not my business. What I care about is that whatever position I take on politics would align with where the people of Nigerians want to go, align with the constitution of Nigeria and align with the objectives of our founding fathers and where they think the country should be at this point in time.
If 36 governors decide to go to one party, it is not my business to comment on that because I have been in the SDP since 1991 and I am not going anywhere. I am okay with it. I have been here since I was 19. They are more mobile and they go from season to season. That’s their responsibility. That’s their style of politics which does not concern me. If you complain that governors are moving to the APC for example, then, why are you celebrating when some lawmakers move to your side at the national assembly. This hypocrisy is not my line of thinking.
What is important to me is: what is the quality of these people who are moving? Are they moving with the people? Their own ratings are quite low, all of them. They are not solving any of the problems. There is no state in Nigeria that is safe, secure, good employment record, accountability record, there is none that is not having one corruption issue or the other. No state that is handling its business properly, such that these failed incumbents all have one thing in common. If all of them are migrating to one side, it is not a problem for me.
Regarding who the main opposition is, first we are not in the parliamentary system of government. The fact that the ADC decides to be a copycat shouldn’t bother me. The APC is wooing and receiving governors into their midst and the ADC, maybe because they are of the same stock as APC since many of them came from the APC, they too thought that that is how to be strong as they also started looking for all manners of people whether they believe in what they stand for or not. We are not worried about that.
That is still the politics of incumbency and we have always maintained in the SDP that ADC is a branch of the APC and APC is a scion of the PDP. They are the same altogether. They are in a relay of failure, handling the baton from one failed administration to the other and what the ADC people are trying to do is to jump the queue because in this rotational inefficiency and failure, some of them have taken their turn and they are not being favoured presently. They are trying to rearrange themselves.
If you listen to how they speak, I have nothing against them. They speak in terms of personality criticism. But in the SDP, ours is to lay the foundation for ideological redirection of the country, realignment with the constitution, particularly chapter 2 of the constitution, which is the fundamental objective and direct principle of the state policy, accountability and social investment.
This personality stooges, going from place to place, is not our style. We are not aiming ever to be in the position where the ADC is. They would have been in our party. There is a reason we said this your style is not our style. Our style is that the incumbent needs to go and we are not looking forward to members of the national assembly crossing over to our party.
What is that style of politics that you are not in tune with?
I am not in tune with the politics of hypocrisy. For example, somebody who spent 20 years in the senate and passed four electoral acts, didn’t make any meaningful contribution to improve electoral efficiency, expand democracy and credibility and spent eight of out of those 20 years in the senate as senate president. He was senate president when they received the Uwais report, they didn’t do anything to make the election transparent and make it work. The kind of politics of hypocrisy is where you now come out because you are not the incumbent for the day, you start to scream blue murder on something you had an opportunity to deal with; where you were Minister of Justice and Attorney General and there was no rule of law, there was corruption, lack of credibility, total breach of trust and breach of the constitution and now you are out screaming.
That is the kind of politics we don’t want. Politics of personality without principle, jumping from place to place and whose attitude to politics depends on whether it favours them today or not. We, in the SDP, are not looking for members of the national assembly to cross into our party. We are joining the movement called FixNass, which is to say none of them should return because if you look at the journey from 1999 to date and the trillions that we passed in appropriation and all gone with not much to show for it,
Nigeria needs a new National Assembly with virtually no incumbent coming back. We are not asking all these failed legislators to come to our party, we are asking Nigerians that they have an opportunity to determine their national assembly. Send patriotic, intelligent and independent-minded people there. That is what we are trying to do now by revamping the system and not be a beneficiary of the broken incumbency. That is the only way we will not come, year in year out, and start singing the same song of failure, under development of hypocrisy of blaming the previous government and repeating exactly what they are doing. We want a fundamental shift in our politics.
Why should Nigerians trust a smaller party like the SDP over a large party with more visibility?
Your questions show the symptoms of the three problems in Nigeria. One, there is no political class. What we have is a rump of military apologists. Those who were fronts for the military government and some people with all kinds of idleness came together, took over power because of the manner in which the military left in 1999. These people don’t care about any party. What we have now are people who are desperate to be in government, desperate to be in positions somewhere in government. Secondly, the APC is not the problem but a symptom.
The APC is a mutation of political cancer where desperate politicians who have nothing in common can be alarmed by the possibilities that the PDP might live up to its boast that it might live up to 60 years in power, they gathered as there was nothing that would ordinarily connect Muhammad Buhari with Bisi Akande, it was impossible. There was no ideological reconciliation. What they did was to just come together and the things they said they were going to do, they couldn’t do it.
Some of the PDP people are like rats on the ship, they realised the PDP ship was sinking and became the new PDP and joined them. Anybody who understands Nigerian politics and history will say the APC is the problem. The APC is a flash in the pan, it is another nightmare in the management of the psyche of Nigerian politics.
By the time we defeat them in 2027, they will be gone in seven days as nobody will remember them. They stand for nothing. They have no ideas. They just sit down there wasting their time. What we need to do in the opposition is not to poach one politician to your side or the other because they are all rotten eggs. What we need to do is to go back to the people and open this stinking room of politics so that fresh air can come in. Bring fresh people who are patriotic, who have practised professions and who have led a group of people with integrity and character and push them into politics. I used to be a critic on television for a long time but I realised that I would rather put my hat in the ring and propose ideas.
So, we need more people who are not seen as politicians but good citizens, good leaders and civic examples of what a typical righteous Nigerian should look like. We need such people to come into politics as there is nothing you can get from the present crop of political elites
The Nigerian voters may not be able to differentiate between SDP, APC and ADC because they seem not to know the difference in ideology of these parties. Do you agree with that?
Whoever thought about that seems not to understand and know Nigerians. You think Nigerians are stupid. The problems Nigerians have with politicians is that they are not speaking to their issues. They are speaking about abuse and personal certificates, ethnicity and religion. Speak to the fact that there is insecurity in the country, poverty in the country and lay out a plan as we are laying in the SDP, on how to solve the problem of insecurity, poverty and perennial injustice at every level of the country.
These are the things people go to the mosques and churches to pray for. They worry about how to get home safely, so that their children who went to school will not be kidnapped. They worry how to maintain a healthy family and a sound home and give them good housing, good healthcare and education. Those are the things politicians should be talking about and that is why in the SDP, we are distinct. That is why we are saying make the election credible, do instantaneous electronic transmission, ensure you don’t cheat in the election, no violence, ensure the INEC is independent, once you do that, you would see the shift.
The SDP is an old political party as we have a long term plan for getting Nigerians to be conscious of the choices they need to make, informing the government from time to time, so that the national objectives can be met.
The primaries of political parties are now either consensus or direct primary, what is your take?
My point is that President Tinubu is not a bold statesman. He has mismanaged the opportunity given to him to put his signature to electoral acts, which he messed up. However, democracy cannot fall or rise based on one person who is misusing his own office. Politicians, even though we are complaining about the imperfections in the act, we need to remember that there was a time we were under colonial rule. We had elections and we got independence. There was a time when we were under military rule, we still had elections and Abiola won.
Peter Obi just expressed uncertainty of clinching the ADC presidential ticket. Does this not show how poorly organised the opposition parties are?
I don’t understand. Why should politics and democracy rest on the personal mobility of an individual. It is not relevant.
Who is not relevant?
All these names are not relevant to the question of the day, whether one person is a peripatetic politician moving from shop to shop, is not relevant.
How can you say he is not relevant when he did brilliantly well in 2023?
Nobody did brilliantly well because the president who is there now got everything. He had the highest vote, because of a very tiny single digit mandate from Nigerians.
(Cuts in) but today he is the president of the nation…
That is why he is not carrying anyone along as he is aloof.
That is your personal opinion, right?
I will assume you brought me here to say my personal opinion.
But you should be constructive, shouldn’t you?
I am giving you my objective opinion about somebody whose economic policy is lost, somebody whose ministers say they are not getting even one or two percent of their capital vote as it is in the budget, whose economic policies have not led to employment, who cannot handle insecurity. The import of that is that the next person who wants to be president has to have a deeper connection to the people, and has to have substantial participation of the voters. I want to be president with at least 40 million votes. I don’t want to be president with eight million votes.
INTERVIEW: Nigeria needs fresh leaders, not expired political elites – Adebayo
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