The presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has raised the alarm that the ruling APC was gambling with the lives of Nigerians and should be shown the way out in the 2027 general elections. Excerpts:
Is the opposition losing the plot? Because the chaos apparently from the outside is quite uninspiring according to most Nigerians.
Well, I don’t know where you got your statistics from. I think what is not inspiring is the governance record of the APC. They have left the people with no choice than to find a way to hang on to any hope they can. And I think to the extent that Nigerians have hope, it is personally not hope in the government, but hope in God Almighty. That’s the only thing we haven’t lost. But we are trying to tell Nigerians that you should also have hope in the future and the authority that we are bringing. I don’t think that it’s much about the opposition. It is primarily that the government has a responsibility to make democracy worthy. That the people who are shareholders in this democracy will feel that they are getting some dividends back. Now, even if the opposition were weak, which is not the case, the government cannot profit from the weakness of the oppositions to abandon the people. The government has a responsibility to deliver on its mandate. And this government has failed woefully to do so.
Now, for the opposition, we should not be accused of not matching the government billboard for billboard, poster for poster, campaign for campaign, because we are supposed to give them time to settle and show their true colours.
We are not supposed to be a 24-hour, 12-month, round-the-clock election country. We are supposed to go to the farm, practice our profession, teach students, do something meaningful.
So after the last presidential election, I went back to my profession as a lawyer and spent some of my time consulting. It’s not supposed to be a full-time thing for everybody.
But the government now is laying a foundation which I hope we don’t copy. A foundation where there’s zero governors.
You start the next election while you finish the last one. And that’s what they are trying to recommend.
And the public, the media, should not reward them. What they are doing is what they call false start in athletics.
Before the whistle is blown, you’re very tired of running. So everyone is trying to catch up with them.
But Prince, a lot of people will say that’s the pot calling the kettle black. It might be true. However, if you look into the mirror, you realize that that’s exactly what the opposition is doing. Members of the opposition, started this whole conversation about coalition.
I started all this conversation about defeating the president when he was barely two years in office. I mean, you surely wouldn’t expect a ruling government to just sit and watch as the opposition galvanizes the country for a possible defeat in the next election. That Is not how democracy is designed to work. Democracy is designed to work by those who are in government governing and those who are outside criticizing them and showing alternatives.
Our job is to make the noise, to show to the people that we are here, and you can see how they are working, we can do better.
It’s also to remind them that some of the things they are doing is not working and to profile alternatives. So it’s our duty. Our duty in the opposition is to talk. It’s our duty in the opposition is to talk, to organize, to plot, their own to govern. If they can govern well, and still have time, Because they have a political party and they have a government.
So the political party can be responding to us while they are governing. But from what I see, and it’s not my business to cry for APC, the government itself has grounded the APC itself, and everybody is just sitting down, watching from the sideline. So the government itself now is doing the role of their own party. They are not governing, they are not accountable to their own party, they are not accountable to the electorate, so they are just in one permanent campaign mode. That is why it looks like we are doing catch-up. So people will say, opposition, let them settle down.
And it is painful because the president himself was chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriation before.
So it shows to you that what they are doing is deliberate mismanagement of public funds, privatization of what is public wealth, and misdirection of governmental priorities.
To be honest you’re talking about a party that has won a general election three times in a row that is not suggestive of a party that doesn’t have any strategy.
The electioneering strategy which they have summarized by themselves as grabs, snatch and run away. That how they describe it. Their leader who is the leader of our country now by the Commander In Chief, president who is the head of APC says don’t disturb yourself, just grab, snatch and run away.
The APC held a national summit which is supposed to be a precursor for the second anniversary of the Tinubu administration. At the event, the president said if it’s one party state Nigerians want, there is nothing wrong in that. What do you make of his thoughts?
It’s unfortunate, because this president is approaching its midterm.
He’s spending the money of all Nigerians, making decisions for all Nigerians. He’s supposed to be accountable to all Nigerians, but he’s talking like a chairman of a party, not like the commander in chief and head of state of Nigeria.
So he’s forgotten who he’s working for. He thinks he’s working for the fat cats in that hall. Who say they’ve never had it so good? He doesn’t understand that the Nigerian who is in Bama, the Nigerian who is in Chibok, the Nigerian who is anywhere in Kastina or Kogi or anywhere where there’s no peace now, wants to know from him.
What plan he has for them, the women who carry their babies on their back and take them to the hospital, they cannot pay medical bill, they cannot feed them. People whose degrees, their certificates are under their pillow and they have no job, they want an answer. They don’t want you to be taunting opposition and joking and all of that, they want you to say this is how i’ve served you, these are the mistakes I have made, this is how I want to correct them. This is what I have for you in the future. He’s forgotten all of that. It shows to you that he’s not conscious of the requirements of that office. And I keep telling Nigerians be careful about people who just have a vision to be big men to occupy a big position and control large resources, without looking at the other side of the balance sheet, the responsibility that comes with it. That is the problem that it is in my own view with much respect to the president, that is an irresponsible way to give a midterm report.
But do you also think that the APC and the leadership of the party and the people in charge of the government are living in an alternate reality compared to what some Nigerians would consider a below-par performance?
No, I think that, first, they’re not even performing anymore. They have gone a whole. But what I see here, when you study it, it’s not that they are in living in a cocoon. They’re acting a script. They’ve confused themselves to the point where they want to please the emperor .
They’re competing about who is going to be a jester for the man. And the man is a highly intelligent person. How he falls into this trap, I don’t understand.
If you are an analyst of power all over the world, you know a system is crashing when you see them like this. When your advisor and supporters sit you on a throne like an emperor, and they are saying you are the tallest emperor in the world, you are the brightest, nobody can challenge you, you are next to God, when they start doing that to you, they no longer working for you.They have lost hope in you that you cannot take criticism, they must praise you, they are insecure, they are all struggling, you can see they don’t believe in any of the things they are saying.
If they were delusional, we can say let’s wake them up, but they are acting a play and that play is very costly play.
