Leader of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, and its presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, recently had a parley with a cross section of the media where he spoke on developments in the country – insecurity, President Trump and withdrawal of police personnel from VIP protection. The Abuja Inquirer was there. Excerpts?
Looking at Nigeria today in November 2025, how would you describe the state of the country?
Well, it’s still order less from the point of view of governance, and primary duties of the different tiers of government still lie unattended to, and the dire situation that our people find themselves, or we all find ourselves remains unchanged.
There are indications that the government has lost its map, and it’s just waking up every day reacting to any new incident, or the umbrage, whether local or international. There is no rational observer who would say, ah, this is the trajectory of where the Tinubu presidency was headed to.
What is happening in November 2025 was what they planned in November 2024. President Tinubu has lost control of his own government, which he hasn’t had time to put together to start with.
And however much you speak for the government, you cannot say that where they are now in 2025 was where they planned to be when they were planning a year ago or two years ago. They definitely are in the wilderness, and if the captain of the ship cannot find his way to the bridge, and he’s not able to locate where the ship is situated, he cannot determine the direction the ship is going, he has no control over the speed of the sail, the passengers on that ship are entitled to a new captain, or they give up on that ship, and you cannot give up on Nigeria.
Some people accuse the opposition, including yourself, of exploiting the current misfortune under President Tinubu’s administration just to score political points. What is your take?
Well, if the president wants to be helped, from what we say, he can pick up enough help. But if you say we are making capital of the misfortune, then they are producing too many misfortunes because if you think that the opposition is taking advantage of your misfortune, then you should reduce the amount of misfortune you have. You can’t fail in every aspect, both critical, primary, basic, even tertiary.
You fail in security, you fail in economy, you fail in culture, you fail even in sports. So, you fail in everything. And you expect that people are not going to remark on those failures. Are you saying that a community with people running helter-skelter, where even you, people in your administration, don’t feel safe, where even the community you come from doesn’t feel safe, is okay? And the vast resources of Nigeria are located in the Northern part of Nigeria.
The entire North is closer to Somalia than it is to what Nigeria used to be. So, you cannot Afghanstanise your own country and expect people to sing your praises. You cannot take every index that you met and make it worse.
President Trump recently repeated his description of Nigeria as a disgraced country. Do you believe that is a fair description?
I don’t agree with President Trump that we’re a disgraced country. But, he’s speaking the language of international diplomacy. When you see the president of a country, you say Nigeria is here. So, what he meant is that the Tinubu administration is a disgraced government.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation has suggested that recent surges in attacks may be linked to foreign interest, particularly from America. Does that explanation hold any water for you?
It is like a goalkeeper saying that the attacker or striker from the other side is shooting the ball too fast. That’s an admission of failure. Your job is to catch the ball. So, whether the attack is coming from within or from without, your responsibility is to stop the attacks. And every tool in the world that you need to stop the attack is given to you, and on every occasion, at every opportunity, at every juncture, you fail to use these tools for what they are meant to be used for.
Nigeria has enough money, enough manpower, enough institutional experience in the military, enough association of friendships all over the world, enough technological and scientific and other skills within Nigeria to defend this beautiful country.
Do you see the current insecurity as an existential threat to Nigeria?
Of course, it is. Two problems we have. Problem number one, non-state actors have infiltrated the government. The government is absent-minded, absent from duty. Now, it’s also deceiving itself, politically in a way, to elongate its tenure, even though it cannot do the basic function. Those are the problems. The citizens have been coping. They should have been on the street long ago, but I do not recommend that. I recommend that you should be patient, but our people have been overly patient. The disturbance in the country is now causing international concern to the point where world powers are debating whether to take over the whole thing, as if we’re not a growing concern. The manner of their intervention, the angulation of the argumentation, is suggesting that they have a particular section of their population that they feel sympathetic towards, and that is going to create internal alienation in the country.
With your own international contacts, have you and other opposition figures been working behind the scenes to calm tensions or have you simply been watching the Tinubu administration struggle?
It’s not Tinubu’s country. Tinubu is a mistake. The country is a reality. Number one, I’ve been to the House of Lords in London. I’ve talked to people there. You can’t say, nobody can say, they don’t have a Nigerian intelligence agency to give them reports. Nobody can say I spoke against the country. I’ve been speaking to the Americans for a long time. I’ve never spoken against the country. So, we speak for the country. But, we cannot deny the fact that what is obvious to the people you are talking to, if you don’t want to lose credibility, is that they know you don’t have a proper government at home; a government that behaves like a government. So, they will ask you, what can you do to make things better? Because they too, in some areas, want a better partner to deal with at home.
I was in London recently in the House of Lords, I sat with them in their proceedings. We talked about Nigeria. You must have seen my intervention, my opinion in The Independent of the UK. You’ve seen some of my intervention in the media, including the international media. I’ve always been supportive of my country. I’ve always said, do not invade Nigeria. Do not throw bombs into Nigeria. Try as much as possible to cooperate with the government that is in Nigeria. They have shortcomings. They’re not a serious set of people but remember that there’s a longstanding relationship between Nigeria and your country, and you should expand your interaction with members of the civil society, with the opposition, and all of that, and to see that, overall, we’re not treated like a Banana Republic, even though we have an amateur government in power now.
But, we are a regional power in our own right, and I reminded them of the role we played in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Lebanon, Congo and in many places. So, we deserve respect, and they understand that.
Do you believe there is a link between the strong international rhetoric and what is actually happening on the ground here, especially when we see so much exaggeration of the casualty figures?
You cannot use embellishment when you are talking about human life. If 50 people were killed, and somebody goes to write 500 people were killed, it makes no difference about the fact that 50 people were killed. Yeah, but the scale and intensity says a different thing. A country that wants to succeed does not make that kind of argument. It makes no sense. So, the numbers don’t matter. If your house caught fire, and somebody goes to report your house got burned down, you cannot argue that only half of my house is burned down. That’s not the issue, seek help. Your house shouldn’t be burned down in the first place.
The way Nigerians are being killed like chicken. If there’s another country where birds are dying like that, or dogs are dying like that, the international community would ask, why are dogs dying like this in this country? So, not talk of human life. It is not a responsible argument from a government communication point of view to argue with people who are reporting real tragedies in your country. If people were killed in Cameroon, and they reported that people were killed in Nigeria, you can argue and say, no, those people were killed in Cameroon, not in Nigeria. But if people are killed in Nigeria, ignore the exaggeration, deal with the killing, because when the killing goes away, the exaggeration will go away. So, that is why nobody has ever exaggerated that Nigeria is frozen up with snow, because snow doesn’t fall here. So anything that happens in any country will be exaggerated.
In America, there’s police killing of Black people. And when you talk to Americans about it, they don’t see it as often as when we see it from outside. So, anything that happens in your country that becomes a pattern is liable to occasionally or periodically suffer exaggeration. But, the root cause is what you need to deal with, which the government is failing to deal with, and it’s getting worse by the day.
There have been some military deployments and rescues in recent weeks and the president has ordered the withdrawal of police personnel from VIP protection duties to the frontlines. What do you make of the government’s response so far?
I don’t have police guarding me. However, what I can let you know is nothing’s wrong with the armed forces. They have the wrong commander-in-chief, full stop.
It was the elected commande-in-chief. Yeah, you can elect the wrong person. You can buy the wrong shoe that doesn’t fit your feet.
So the issue is, you can use someone to buy the wrong shoe and have foot poisoning. The problem facing Nigeria today is that the commander in chief is not a good commander in chief. He can make a good commander in chief out of himself if he wants, but he’s neglecting that mission.
Now I’m happy that he also knows that he doesn’t have to go all over the world on a fashion parade, that he can actually sit at home, go to the situation room, and interact with his security chief. Isn’t that what he’s been doing? I mean, he didn’t go to South Africa, he shelved some of his international engagements to stay back home. We are talking of episodic, reactive actions. We are not talking of systematic work of a commander in chief.
