Prince Adewole Adebayo was presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 election. In this interview, he speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s administration, the emerging alliance of opposition political parties and the 2027 general elections, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes

The Tinubu administration will be two years in May, but it appears politicians are already doing the permutations and strategizing for 2027. It is looking like they’re not even concerned about how this administration rules. Don’t you think it’s too early for us to start talking about the 2027 elections when the administration still has over two years left?

It is not too early; it depends on what activity people are engaging in. Nigeria is a very big country. I’ve been in Adamawa State and it is just one of the states in the North-East. We have NorthWest, which is larger, and we have NorthCentral.

Then, we have the entire South, comprising the South-East, South-West and South-South. So, it’s a very large country. Infrastructure is not as developed and there is diversity in the country. So, consultation is very important. Hearing people out is very important. And politics is not the same thing as elections.

On many occasions, you want to engage with your party members. Sometimes, you engage with the communities outside your party. Sometimes, you need to win people over to your side, and this requires a lot of persuasion. So, for every community you go to, you need to go to another one; so, it’s part of the process.

The government should be governing. Meanwhile, what we are doing does not disturb the government. Sometimes, it gives feedback to the government about how people are thinking. For instance, I just came back to do this interview with you, I received a lot of information about Adamawa.

And I think the government of the day needs to send people to Adamawa to come and hear what the people are saying. People are saying that this government is not doing well at all and we are learning lessons from that.

It looks like politicians are just going where they tend to get something. Almost every politician wants to be on the side of the ruling party and this may not give room for viable opposition. Does that not give you a cause for concern?

Well, we are on course; at least, it’s very hard for you to hear that there are people from the SDP crossing over anywhere. Those who are crossing around have been crossing for some time. They are known for that. In politics, different people have their missions, and we are not in the business of criticizing other people about their personal choices.

The only person I’m qualified to criticize is a person who is in government, making decisions on behalf of the public, spending government money in public buildings and using public facilities. But for other persons, who are doing their politics, I leave it to them, but we will never be one of those who will cross to join the ruling party. We will remain those who are galvanizing Nigerians for better governance.

We, as SDP, if you listen to our national chairman, Shehu Musa Gabam, our national secretary, Dr. Olu Agunleye and many people in our party, our mission is to get a consensus across the country. It is to say that we need better governance in this country, and we need governance around chapter two of the constitution and the manifesto of the SDP. We are a little to the left.

That is how we have been since our creation in the Third Republic. And what we are trying to do is to maintain a minimum contact with the people, and we are recruiting politicians, who are not with us to say, you cannot have a period of every four years to oppose somebody. In 2015, we opposed Goodluck Jonathan.

We opposed Muhammadu Buhari. We now oppose President Tinubu. We must have consensus about good governance, security, welfare, investment in social investment for the people, balance the economy, create a strong Naira and have low inflation and high employment. That is what we’re going about doing. We are not limited to those who have grievances against the government of the day or those who are defecting from party to party.

We welcome everyone provided that you understand that the platform we’re building now is a platform that wants to talk about consensus around governance, so that when the election is over, the people can be sure of the minimum dividends of democracy.

What do you think Nigerians expect of this government that they are not seeing?

It’s my prayer on behalf of the Nigerian people and for the sake of Nigeria as a republic that President Tinubu turns a new leaf. I hope that some benefits of the painful measures he has taken will go to the people, and I hope that he will hear more.

Many people are disappointed that President Tinubu, whom they thought would be able to do a very good job has not managed to show that

He should not be in a cocoon or a bubble, thinking that by juggling numbers and statistics, he is going to feel that he is helping the economy, or that he will start to think in terms of how the people are faring, because the welfare of the people is the essence of the economy.

We are also hoping that Nigerians will have hope that if the government of President Tinubu doesn’t get it right, that is not the end of hope for Nigeria and that they can invest their hope and trust in an alternative platform like ours and on alternative programmes that we propose.

So, I wish President Tinubu every success in life and every success in his administration. I hope that he would occasionally go out and hear directly from the people. It might be a big mistake to think that Nigerians can wait for as long as it takes for all their slow motion programmes to trickle down. I’m not in his party.

I’m not his supporter and I’m not in his government. I only wish him well because he is the leader of Nigeria, but if Tinubu doesn’t take advice and understand that people are suffering and dying, and that there are measures he can take which may not align with his Bretton Woods neoliberal approach to governance in the last two years, then, maybe, people will be happy to embrace SDP as a better alternative to implement those measures that will better their lives.

There has been crisis in the political space of every political party in Nigeria, and that makes it very difficult for opposition parties to be able to checkmate the ruling party in the country. What is your reaction to that?

I think the political parties should learn from the SDP because after we had our primaries in 2022, no one went to court. All those who lost the primary election to me worked on my campaign for the presidential election.

We had many grievances with the result of the election, and with process, but we did not go to court against Tinubu, All Progressives Congress (APC) or the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). We decided to learn our lessons. And those areas where INEC didn’t do well, we have made advocacy about them.

In those areas where we as a party feel short, we have expanded our base and we will work better to strengthen our structure. We are working on that. There is no challenge to the leadership of Shehu Gabam as our party’s national chairman. The SDP has no issue, either at national, zonal, state or local government level, and we have participated in every governorship election since then.

When we were not treated fairly in Kogi State, where we won and they robbed us, the candidate at the party went all the way to the Supreme Court. We did not blackmail or blacklist anyone, and we have been engaging since then. And nobody in the leadership of our party has submitted his CV or résumé to President Tinubu, looking for anything that the government can offer.

We are not interested. What we are interested in is to build our party and to go across the country and unite the people of Nigeria and to see that the problems of human development indices, where we are lagging, become part of why we do politics. We are also trying to build our politics around issues, so that we can resolve the issues, and people can live well.

So, we are not part of those political parties that are in crisis, trying to join the big government or trying to destabilize anyone. What we are doing is building large tents, calming our system down, and almost everybody who has come across the SDP is a nationalist.

They want to do what is right, starting from the national chairman to the last person in the party. And that is the spirit. So, if other political parties decide to come and join us, or at least resemble us in many ways, including in how they carry out their affairs, I think the opposition will be more viable.

You said SDP is not anti-Tinubu, but you are against his policies. How do you differentiate the man from the policy he makes?

The policies outdated Tinubu. We started this journey from the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), when we devalued our currency. We did so many other things, and when the PDP was in government, they did a lot of good things, but there are some things they did that I didn’t agree with.

For instance, I didn’t agree with them for failing to boost the industrial capacity of the country and even many of the enterprises that they privatized did not start to function well and we are leaving a lot of people behind. Our textile industry is gone. Our petroleum industry is just about to restart a good thing now, after two decades of doldrums. Our agriculture is not working.

So, it doesn’t matter that President Tinubu is there now. Whoever is there; our criticism will be the same. But many people are disappointed that President Tinubu, whom they thought would be able to do a very good job has not managed to show that. But I’m not disappointed. That was why I opposed him.

That was why I ran against him last time, and that is why I’m going to run against him in 2027 if the opportunity comes my way. The issue is that speaking against traffic jams doesn’t mean you hate drivers. Speaking against hunger doesn’t mean you hate the Minister of Agriculture. Speaking against poor grades doesn’t mean you hate the Minister of Education. It is that these are things we shouldn’t have.

I don’t like an epileptic power supply, but it doesn’t mean I hate the minister in charge of power. So, the President is making a lot of Nigerians poor, he is leaving millions behind, and a lot of money is being spent in the budget and outside the budget, which is not reflecting on the welfare of the people. So, it doesn’t matter who is there; these are not good things.