In this interview, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party, SDP, Prince Adewole Adebayo, speaks on the readiness of the opposition for the 2027 elections, the performance of President Bola Tinubu, the controversy surrounding the Electoral Act, and the role of politicians who recently moved into the opposition. He also explained why he believes Nigeria needs a complete political reset rather than alliances amongst members of the old political establishment. Excerpts:
NEC has announced dates for the 2027 general election, do you think the opposition is actually ready for the election?
The opposition being ready is a given. What’s more important is whether the people are ready. Democracy is about the people. If you ask me if I am ready to take over from president Bola Tinubu and govern the country better, yes, I am ready, even today. You can drive me to the Aso Rock Villa now and ask me to take over, you will see a better result today, not tomorrow. I am better on every front. I am better prepared, better intentioned, better programmed surrounded by better people and with clearer vision, closer to what the constitution wants. It is the people who need to be ready to change their government.
The idea that the duty of opposition is to hold the government to account is misplaced. The primary duty to take the government to account are the different branches of government. The National Assembly has a duty to oversee what the executive is doing and the judiciary is to ensure that both the legislature and executive comply with the law of the land.
It is now left for the people to hold their elected officials accountable. My job in the opposition is to form the next government as I don’t want to choose opposition as a career.
The Inter Party Advisory Council, IPAC, recently indicated that other political parties might boycott the 2027 election should amendments urgently not done on the Electoral Act 2026. Is that a right decision to take?
The right decision is to have a good Electoral Act. You saw me at the National Assembly being teargassed by the government when they were in the process of passing the law. Mine is to ensure they pass a law which encourages the people to come out and vote, which deepens democracy and which makes credibility of the election a matter of law.
That is what the government needs to do. For the political party to prepare for the election while still imploring the government to do the right thing but ultimately, it is what Nigerians want. It is not an issue between the government and the opposition. It is a discussion that all Nigerians need to have which is that the Electoral Act as currently passed and signed by president Tinubu, is it what Nigerians want?
Do you support IPAC’s position of boycott?
I think IPAC is right to say that if you are not going to make the rules fair and clear from the beginning, then they have the right to say they are not going to participate under that rule. But I will encourage every political party to still continue to do their underground work and not be caught unawares.
You seem confident in your ability and capability to defeat President Tinubu and the APC in 2027. What gives you that confidence?
My confidence is in the Nigerian people; that the Nigerian people are patient. What politicians don’t realise is that people want to focus on where the problems lie. So, if the opposition is saying the president and the government is not good, people will judge not only the government, they will also judge the opposition. If the people are saying the government is obviously not good but the opposition is not better either, the people will just abstain, so our duty as we are pointing out that President Tinubu government is a disaster, which it is obviously by every metric, we also have to organise our fronts in the opposition and bring clear, cogent and concrete plans to the people and project people who have credibility, that is the challenge.
It is not difficult beating President Tinubu blue black, we will beat him. Even in the last election where he supposedly won and we had to agree that he won because that is what the law says, you will see that the arithmetic shows that he lost because more people voted for other people than him. What we need to do now is bring more voters out to get them to understand that yes, there are many other problems but your chief problem is to get the APC out of power and your immediate solution is to remove Tinubu and then you can focus on the SDP and listen to what we are doing and check the credibility of all our candidates, if you are convinced that we can do better, you better come out and vote for us en-masse.
There are some faces who appear to be the new face of the opposition, like some who are now in the ADC, and have canvassed that the opposition needs to be united if they have to defeat the APC. However, you don’t seem to agree or align with them. Why so?
I don’t agree with that analysis. If your aim us to defeat Tinubu per say as one person and you don’t care about who is coming next. Then what is the point? Nigerians are tired of bad government.
Are you willing to work with opposition because you exactly talked about Malami, El Rufai, David Mark all in ADC?
How can you say you are against the infestation of insects but you are killing mosquitoes and cockroaches? You cannot be that hypocritical. There is a reason why I am opposed to President Tinubu. It is not because of his name, it is because of his deeds and belief systems and actions. These people whose names you have mentioned share exactly the same attributes as the president. They have been in government, acted like him or were in some situations as he. So my being opposed to Tinubu on certain basic principles automatically means that I am opposed to them too based on those principles. It’s nothing personal.
One needs to be consistent. The establishment, some of their wings are on government, some of their wings are left outside of the government and efforts to enter the government has failed and some of them are now forced to be in opposition but they are not opposed to the ideas of President Tinubu, they are opposed to the fact that they are not in his government.
Realistically the fear is that the SDP may not have the national political machinery required to compete with the APC’s entrenched structure in 2027.
Let the political scientists have that fear. What I can let you know is that the amount of hard work that we have to do to make the party a party of the people. Remember this was the party even under the harsh condition of the military that won the June 12 election that brought democracy to Nigeria and brought the first political martyr in MKO Abiola which brought June 12. It is not about competing with the APC, what we need to do is to sell the party to the people, once the people embrace the party once again, all these speculations will go by the way side. Our mind is focused on the people. When the people are ready, we will defeat any force.
Do you have the structure to face the new reality?
Our duty is to change the reality because if you continue with this reality Nigeria will go to hell and God forbid. If we are going to change our direction, we need to change our consciousness. What the SDP is doing which is why the media is using different matrix because we are not doing parade of big men, we are going to where the people are, waking the people up, getting them interested in the country and ensuring that at the end of the day they can feel proud that they bong to a political party.
You love Nigeria and willing to do anything for the country, yet why not willing to work with Tinubu?
Because Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not Nigeria. Bola Tinubu is in some way anti-Nigeria. Whether he means it to be anti-Nigeria or not but he is working to make the country weaker and less united.
Do you have the feeling that this coming election might be free and fair?
This election has to be free and fair. We have no other alternative. They may not want it to be free and fair. We the people have to make sure it is free and fair. We must make Nigerian people to be interested in it. It will free, fair credible when 75% to 80% of the voters show up but if you are showing up at 7%, that’s why we are reaching out to the people, don’t let anybody discourage you.
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