The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewale Adebayo, has called on Nigerians to stop recycling old politicians if they want any progress in the country.
Speaking on the Arise TV PrimeTime programme, Adebayo agreed with Senator Abba Moro that the root cause of Nigeria’s problem is the elite, including the politicians.
He stressed that the first step toward solving the problem was to get fresh, new politicians and do away with the idea of recycling old politicians
Adebayo likened the old politicians to a leopard, saying, “If you don’t like spots, then you don’t need to bring leopards because leopards cannot change their spots.
“So, you need to listen to new ideas and new politicians. When new politicians come with new ideas, we should not be too conservative as a society because a conservative society is trying to consolidate on its own progress, whether obtained lawfully, historically or wrongly.
“When you see a conservative society, they have something they’ve achieved, something they’ve grabbed from the world which they want to preserve.
“But a country ranking with a 70 per cent poverty rate, a country that has no infrastructure and has no institutions working, cannot be conservative. You have nothing to lose.
“You need new ideas and new leadership to renew yourself. And the ideologies we have, articulated or not articulated, are the ideologies that politics is for the people who are in politics, and government is for those who are in government. That’s why everybody is trying to be in government.
“No matter the condition set for them to be in government, they want to be in government. And when they’re not in government, their position is to struggle willingly to be in government, not to change what is going on in the government. So it’s left for the Nigerian people.
“How many politicians do we have in this country? The politicians in this country are not up to two per cent of the population. So, it’s not about what the two per cent are doing or not doing, it is what the 98 per cent want to do.”
Adebayo also agreed with the former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai’s that the All Progressives Congress, APC-led Federal Government is a failed, clannish and visionless administration that has plunged Nigeria into deeper socioeconomic misery.
However, he said El-Rufai did not say anything new, as he just re-echoed what he has been saying since 2022/2023.
“He is not saying anything new. He’s saying what I said in 2022/23 in 2025, after many waters have crossed his own bridge. So, he’s echoing me now.”
He welcomed the former Kaduna governor to the club of those who had realised the damage the APC had done to Nigeria. “So, I can’t charge him for copyright, but I can say welcome to the club. But we’ve been saying this for some time. And we’re not saying it out of animosity or anything.”
He argued that the only solution out of the economic mess APC has plunged Nigeria into is to change the government, just like the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) was changed when it was wrecking the country’s economy.
“The results that we are getting from the performance of the APC in the last 10 years resemble the unsatisfactory results we got under the PDP for 16 years.
“And if this result must change, we must change the political tendencies that are in authority. Changing your political party without changing your tendency is just a mere nomenclature,” he warned.
