Prince Adewole Adebayo was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election. In this interview, he speaks on the leadership crisis rocking the party, expulsion of a former governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai, and opposition coalition, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes

There are reports that there are factions in the Social Democratic Party (SDP); what actually is the state of your party concerning the story?

There are no factions in the SDP, but there are tendencies. And for a political party like us, we had one common tendency. Ideological convergence was already set up for us. We’re a different party. We’re lucky, because when originally the party came into existence in 1989, before even members came into the party, we already had a path to go.

Remember the SDP and National Republican Convention; one is to the left, the other to the right. Politicians who wanted to go to the left side of the ideological divide, decided to go to the SDP.

That’s how we came up with Shehu Yar’Adua and so many other people like that, but eventually, we ended up with MKO Abiola and the Farewell to Poverty and Insecurity.

Then, when the party came back after the military interregnum, we followed that ideology. But, you know, as you look for electoral success, new people join. And some of these people who joined are human beings, so they are coming with their own tendencies and politics, the way they know it.

So, you expect to see some conflicts. Secondly, you will see that SDP is a party of law and order. Every organ of the party works. In many political parties, these organs are decorative. So, if you say there’s a National Working Committee (NWC), it could be three governors sitting down on top of a money bag, telling you what to do.

But, in the SDP, no matter who you are, if the NWC is calling you, you better go there quickly and listen to them. If the State Working Committee is calling you; you better be careful. If the ward executive is calling you; you better be careful.

You can see that the duly elected and substantive chairman is Shehu Musa Gabam. Nobody’s questioning that. The national secretary is Olu Agunloye. But Gabam was suspended by the NWC, which he presides and he has comported himself even though he argues vehemently that there’s no basis to suspend him. So, for the past two months, he hasn’t come to the office.

He’s obeying the order of the NWC. Occasionally, when the party needs him to do anything, answer some questions or perform any activity, he still obeys. So, SDP is a party of law and order. But there are people I have some sympathy for. They are new in the party and they assume that they can buy over party officials.

That cultural shock is what you see. So many people, when they face discipline in the party, or they have a request and the request is not met, they will resort to what they have been used to in their previous places. But a political party that wants to grow has to have a room to know that people are learning.

So, we just watch them, let them do all the drama they need to do. The SDP is not about drama at all. There’s no faction, the organs are there, and everything is intact, and if anybody’s in doubt, he or she can go to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

Former Governor Nasir El-Rufai called on voters in Kaduna to vote for SDP candidates in the recent by-election despite claims by the party that he has been expelled. How do you address the question of expelling or banning someone who is reportedly not a member of your party?

That question is for the NWC of the party. For me, I don’t want to ban anyone but if anyone who is banned, repents along the line, they should be accommodated. But the organ of the party has the right to make a decision regarding membership. The Supreme Court of Nigeria has decided that.

What I can say, generally speaking, is that as a member of a political party that obeys its own rules, if the party says this is how we go about it, I will follow the party.

However, the party has sufficient organs within it for anybody, including someone who was banned or suspended, to approach over his or her case. So, for me who is a member of the party and who wants the party to grow, anyone who says vote for the SDP is my friend.

The results that we are getting from the performance of the APC in the last 10 years resemble the unsatisfactory result we got under the PDP for 16 years

Whether he is in my party or not and whether he was suspended or not suspended. I go around telling people to vote for SDP, not because of me, but because the country needs alternative politics.

So where is El-Rufai now; is he a member of your party or is he in ADC?

We know about him being in the coalition. But is he a member of your party?

What I can say is that from party records and from what party officials are saying, he’s not a member of the party. But if he wants to be a member of the party; I will not be against him.

I just have to follow what the party says clearly but the party officials will explain how the processes work. What I can say is that this is how you know members of a party.

You will see their names in the ward register, where they come from. And at the national level, the national secretary will have overall numbers of members and their particulars.

El-Rufai described the APC government as a failed, clannish and visionless administration that has plunged Nigeria into deeper socioeconomic misery. As a leader of one of the parties trying to unseat the ruling party, do you agree with his description?

He’s not saying anything new. He’s saying in 2025, after many waters have crossed his own bridge, what I was saying in 2022 and 2023. I can’t charge him for copyright, but I can say welcome to the club. We’ve been saying this for some time, and we’re saying it not out of animosity or anything.

The results that we are getting from the performance of the APC in the last 10 years resemble the unsatisfactory result we got under the PDP for 16 years.

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.

What do you mean by changing political tendencies?

There is a governing principle that is feudalistic, which is responsible for why our democracy is not in congruence with the result. There is the mentality that people in power don’t believe that power comes from the people. They don’t have respect the rule of law and don’t want to be accountable to the people. They also don’t want to separate money from politics.

That tendency where the bigger your money, the bigger the results you get in politics, and then, when you go into politics, the bigger money you need to roll over your political investment. That kind of mentality, if you have it, you can jump from APC to SDP and to African Democratic Congress (ADC).

If you carry that mentality, wherever you go, it will pollute that place. So, if you are in APC, you don’t even leave APC, you decide to change your mind. For example, President Tinubu doesn’t have to leave the APC. He’s in government but if he decides to govern properly and be accountable, the results will change.

If people just decide to switch parties because there are squabbles but don’t want to drop the tendency that caused the tension where they are coming from, they only change alphabets. In fact, they are now running out of alphabets to use. What is going to change the lives of Nigerians is that we need a different politics.

How can the mindset of politicians be shifted to prioritize the interest of the electorate, who elected them into power?

First, you need new politicians because recycling the old politicians, not just a matter of age or other things, is like a leopard. If you don’t like spots, 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 with 70 per cent poverty rate; a country that has no infrastructure and no institution working, cannot be conservative. You have nothing to lose. You need new ideas, you need new leadership, you need to renew yourself. The ideology we have, articulated or not articulated, is the ideology that politics is for people in politics and that governance is for those 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 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. Let character determine our choices. The answer is on the fingerprints of the voters. Let no one say that the good ones are not coming out or the beautiful ones are not yet born. Now is the time for a new direction. We must bid farewell to poverty and insecurity.

INEC recently asked political parties to desist from any sort of campaigns until 150 days to the elections in line with the electoral law. What’s your take on what the political parties are doing and INEC’s role so far?

Two things are involved here. One, the guilty party is President Tinubu and the APC. When you are the party in government, you set the tone.

When you are the leader of a country, you set the tone, when it comes to obeying laws of the country. There’s nowhere you go, you don’t see the picture of President Tinubu and some members of his family are already dancing and waltzing ahead of 2027. So, since they are campaigning, the opposition has to be in a campaign mood.

Again, there are so many displaced politicians who were used by President Tinubu and dumped on the highway, and who are now walking all over the place, looking for political accommodation. So, in the process of changing parties and looking for parties to join, politics becomes something that is now current.

The key issue is that if we want to go back to regular order, the President and the APC have to go to regular order. Once they go to regular order, remove all those obnoxious billboards all over the place, we will now be listening to them.

Did SDP participate in the last Saturday’s by-elections across the country as the court directed?

We participated. We have been participating. We did the primaries and the nominations. I think there were some misunderstandings with INEC with respect to the procedure and the party decided to go to court to get an interpretation. The interpretation gave INEC a proper guidance as to what it needed to do.

You talked about the opposition; what’s your take on the implications of the internal squabbles within the opposition parties and what do you make of the opposition coalition, under the ADC and the calibre of politicians there?

Let me start with ADC. I have stopped thinking about them because we have had an engagement with them. They came, before they went to ADC, they were to come to SDP.

We had a robust conversation with them. They had no answer to 99 per cent of our questions and we said, thank you very much, carry whatever you’re carrying to the next bus stop.

However, that you have not answered our questions correctly and we said we are not dealing with you, doesn’t mean that we don’t share the same objective with you that President Tinubu is not supposed to be there.

It would be a mistake for the country, even for him personally, and for any other person, to keep him beyond 2027. So, having left us in peace and carrying their whatever activity to their own place, courtesy demands that I should leave them alone.

What is wrong with Nigerian politics is not the APC, as an alphabet or acronym; what is wrong is the philosophy of politics, ranging from the way you fund it to the way you arrange it, what you do when you get in there and the lack of ethics.

Secondly, every party is not the same. We are not the same as them. SDP and ADC, we are polar opposite. We are not the same with them. I’m not saying this because there’s a person that I don’t like there. We have tried to engage them intellectually and ideologically but they gave up. They couldn’t answer the questions, so leave them alone.