Prince Adewole Adebayo was the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 elections. In this interview with select journalists, he speaks on the new tax policy, President Bola Tinubu’s administration in the outgone year, and the fear of Nigeria becoming a one party state, among other issues. ANAYO EZUGWU reports

What’s your assessment of the year 2025?

For the people in government, it’s a year of abuse. And for the media, it’s a year of distraction. We have a list of all the problems of Nigerians. For the political class, it’s a year of removing credibility from politics. For the political class, it’s a year of denouncing themselves. We’re just leaving the party.

Just to see fighting, and for Nigeria, it’s a year of international harassment. How would a foreign country be able to come to your country? Even to insult Nigeria before or criticize Nigeria; it was a serious matter. Do you remember the postcard where the US government sent the so-called Peace Corps. And one of the Peace Corps members criticized Nigeria in the postcard that they sent home.

The kind of messages we get from President Donald Trump and the US, and then the motion that we hope we can perform in social justice, when you look at all of that, it’s a year that we’ve got no way of exacting an opportunity to decide on peace or something. Now we’re going to present the 2026 budget, and they started with constitutional impossibility of saying that they are repealing the 2025 Appropriation Act. Why do we want an Appropriation Act that has to be repealed? The monies spent; are to be regarded as stolen money, or lost money, or lost opportunity?

In all of the contracts awarded; what’s wrong with those subheads? Are you going to revoke all those numbers? Clearly, we don’t have a government. We don’t have people of power. We don’t have access to money to be able to engage them and tackle them. So, 2025 was a year that we beat the government without being able to tackle them. And President Tinubu was appointing everyone.

So, we want to analyze the year as the year that we introduced, or expanded, the most dangerous youth enslavement programme in the country. Under our constitution, tuition is supposed to be affordable. No one is expected, under our constitution, to take a loan to go to school. At the state level, almost every governor is to be found, on the average, in Abuja, lining up to receive Tinubu from one of his medical trips or unexplained journeys.

About six or seven governors changed their parties to join the APC and many more are begging and spending money to join. There is no attempt to get the politicians to interpret the problems of the people and to deal with it. And it’s a year with the most military thing you can remember. A general was killed by so-called terrorists. You really don’t see a general being killed like that.

The other military event is Tinubu’s minister and the Navy officer shouting at each other about a piece of land that neither belonged to them. So, it’s the year we’ve come to the conclusion that it was the year God gave to us to try to make sense of our lives and we decided not to give it to Him in that year.

In a few months’ time, the process for the 2027 elections will commence. Are you not worried that Nigeria is gradually moving to a one-party state?

I’m not worried at all because logic suggests to you that if you have one tendency elite, it’s a matter of time before they will stop pretending to be different and move into one political party. If you look at most of the political parties that have been in existence since 1998, when we started this current transition, which is now 26 years, the elites are the same. Most of the political parties are also the same.

They are mostly neoliberal. The elites are uniformly corrupt and uniformly pointless. So, you can find someone who has been in government for eight years and you were asked to summarize their political philosophy. You don’t know it. But you can find out their political philosophy when they leave office and you charge them to court.

So, these elites don’t understand the essence of a republic. They don’t take the job serious. They don’t have a sense of leadership. And they’re not contributing to anyone. Their economic philosophy is contrary to what is in the constitution even though they swear by the same constitution when they are about to resume office. That is not the language of someone who is collecting power from the people.

This is for the benefit of the people. And returning to the people and becoming an average citizen like the rest of us. So, all of them now have summarized their aspirations and realized that the Tinubu Group is the most successful in all of their career, all of the power structures and all of that.

If you start from Lord Lugard to the last colonial master, I don’t think none of them has been as anti-people as Tinubu has been

So, they decided there’s no point competing with them. They just go and align with them. He is the Capon now and they just follow him. That is what people call one-party state. But in reality, there cannot be a one-party state because the natural dialectics is that any union between hungry people and the overfed people cannot last.

Any union between unemployed people and people who are considered unemployed cannot be together. A union of poor people and those who stole all their wealth cannot endure. So, we are reaching a point where the real opposition will not come from the political class.

The real opposition will come from the Nigerian people because what Nigerian people need is a political party in which the Nigerian people, the ordinary person invested in and is part of and is committed to. It’s a mass movement. That is the end of the so-called oneparty state. The elites as decadent as they are, they are the leftover of the crops of military rule. If you look at the history of most of them, their career began with working for military governments during the dark days of military dictatorship, helping them to hide money.

And if you look at the Tinubu government, you can see how many of them are returning to their virtual homes. Especially in court, they are working for the government and contractors who were virtuous partners are hiding money from them. So, the summary of all of this is that the Nigerian people are having an opportunity to confront the elite with a political alternative.

And now that they are enjoying the drama of problems in these elite classes; it is more important to pay attention to how responsive the Nigerian people are to these problems. How the Nigerian people show character in realizing that these problems won’t go away.

You don’t have philosophical things like in the past. There’s no one who’s coming to rescue you. What you need to do is organize, mobilize, and take collective action to save your democracy. This is the only thing you’ve got, which is the right to vote, the right to have that vote reflect, the right to have people who think similarly to you, and to put them in a position of responsibility, so that the wrong doings will come to an end.

Then we can begin to restore the republic to the original intent. I find it particularly unintelligent to fight and gain independence from white people and be a slave to black people. I don’t see any sense in that. So, the Nigerian people now are going back to what Fanon called mass movement against second slavery. Iif you look at the government of the day, they don’t regard you as equal or as a citizen.

They regard you as someone who they can deny you all your rights politically, economically, socially, and give the next generation a great future while they are smiling to the banks. If you start from Lord Lugard to the last colonial master, I don’t think none of them has been as anti-people as Tinubu has been.

And the only thing that is motivating politicians, commonly, is to use politics and the offices they occupy to address their own personal poverty. So, it is no longer a government that is meant to provide food for the public. It is a government that is providing an avenue for a few people to run to the kitchen and take care of themselves. So, the one party state cannot happen.

We will defeat them and we will send them out. The earlier he makes it easy for the common will of Nigerian people to be expressed through election, and he loses the election and goes away, the better for him and the country. But in whichever way, it is not sustainable for Nigerians to continue with this trajectory.

Are you contesting again in 2027 or is your party joining the coalition?

I am running and I have already told my party. My party officially knows that I will contest in 2027. I am in the process of it. There is no major political party in Nigeria. Unless you are substituting it for the ruling party, which I can ever join, and my deputy can never join it.

Why are you saying you can never join the ruling party?

First, you have to occupy an office. If you take oath of office, you need to keep to it. If you were on your way to join a political party, would you join a political party where they are accusing each other of altering legislation? Would you do that? It is obvious that you can’t claim to be patriotic and still be a member of the APC. There are certain things I don’t agree with.

You could say, well, I like Tinubu, but I don’t care about Nigeria; it is not allowed. If you interact with politicians, they will say, he is their mentor, he is their friend. You cannot be two things that are contradictory at the same time.

You cannot say, I care for the rule of law, and join this government. It doesn’t follow the rule of law. You cannot say I care about accountability and they cannot account for money, they cannot account for budget, they cannot account for time. They can’t even account for the whereabouts of the President.

But some have also accused you of not seeing anything good in this government?

Because I don’t see it, it doesn’t exist. This has to exist. When I woke up this morning, I didn’t see you until you arrived. So, if something good happens, I will see it.

But if nothing good happens, how do I see it? So, I cannot deceive myself. And Nigerian people are not even willing to see it. For example, they say they are reducing the inflation to 16 per cent, about the time when the price of everything has increased. So, how do you calculate your inflation?

The tax reform law has kicked off. As a lawyer, what is your take on that?

Do you think it will further add to the sufferings of Nigerians? First, it’s a bad law. It’s an unjust law. It’s an impractical law. It is a distraction. What is the essence of taxation? Taxation has four critical ingredients in its philosophy. One, it must be a stimulant. It must stimulate the economy. It must be taxed. When you have a tax law, it must make people want to produce so that it helps you to stimulate the economy. Two, it must be distributive, fairly distributive.

That is to say, you produce tax, it must help you to fund, to take resources from the area where it’s wasted to the area where it is useful. For example, if we had a case of homelessness, or maybe you can tax expensive homes, exorbitant homes like mine, and use the money to do affordable housing.

If you have, like Ethiopia, problem of public transportation, you can tax those who bring in luxury vehicles and use the money to buy buses, and I take bus lanes. So, you could tax fabric, imported fabric. So those who are wearing expensive cloths; you can tax them and use the money to buy khaki and hat for the poor. So there must be an adjustment, that tax is a modulator. Three, you must generate more revenue in the long run.

Lastly, it must be transparent and easy to follow. You cannot create a tax law that makes someone who is selling in the market thinking of the need to hire a lawyer. If you have been following the last three months, everybody is thinking that they are going to seize their money in the banks. It is either the President is not in the country mentally or he is not the country physically because he used to be an accountant. At least in the area of finance, you ought to have a bit of a clue. He used to be an auditor but I have a feeling that somehow he’s not interested.

When I went through that law, I read through it, I could easily see the trick. He’s not interested in collecting more revenue. He’s not interested in stimulating the economy. He’s interested in the fiscal singularity because he has achieved political singularity in his mind, where almost all the governments are in his party. What he wants to do is achieve economic singularity, where all the businessmen are his business partners.

And then achieve administrative singularity. He’s not the one who does all the business; the government collects all the taxes. So, this law is poorly written. Why do you say that the Customs can’t collect some customs duties anymore? It’s something that we’ve been doing from precolonial time. If you look at our old arrangement, the Joint Tax Board even banned states from using consultancy.

It is no longer a government that is meant to provide food for the public. It is the government that is providing an avenue for a few people to run to the kitchen and take care of themselves

Nobody should use consultancy to collect revenue because most of government revenue collection of revenue is a sovereign duty. It’s like using private people to do the job of the Navy, like they are doing some of the contract design, or using mercenaries essentially to do the work of the armed forces.

And very soon they will start using vigilante and private guards to do the work of the police. It’s unconstitutional in our own country. So, this is why they are distracting everybody. It’s a bad law. It’s not going to achieve anything.

Secondly, it is a violation of criminal law to have this law because members of the National Assembly are saying that the copy which they have and deliberated upon and they have in their votes and proceedings and they gazetted; it’s not one that has been circulated now. That they have gone to import into the law provisions that National Assembly did not approve but did not deliberate upon at all.

They’re determined to implement it. Three reasons – one, they have no respect for the country, the people in it. They believe that, oh, Nigerians, they will make noise, once we start, they will forget about it. Second, they need money for election, because they want to buy everybody out. So, they need that money. They’ve already internally, mentally spent that money. Three, they want you perpetually be able to be part of those who are collecting your money, even after you have voted them out of government, like they have done at the lower level before.

So, it doesn’t matter if they eventually vote them out of their 10-year espionage. They will still continue to cross their legs at their homes, and each time you go and pay tax or you are forced to pay tax, they are surcharging you. And they will use that money to finance more politics and eventually subjugate you. At the end of your lifetime, you, your children, everything around you has been appropriated to serve one empire.

Have you joined other opposition leaders to demand for interim government, particularly the likes of Atiku Abubakar, who have fought for the coalition?

I can’t ask for interim government because the government is elected for a fixed term. It’s only when the election comes, if you want to change your life, vote for me and get it if you go home. But until then, the government, I don’t know, I can’t force them out. I don’t want military coup. See, your people whom you brought, they’ve had to kill you. So you will save your life by turning away and forcing these particular people away. That’s all I can do. And as for the coalition that you mentioned, we are talking about the meaning of the life of the people.

The fact that I happen to not like the APC, which is a fact, and you don’t like the APC as well, does not solve the problem for people. Chances are very clear that the APC doesn’t like me either. But that’s not the level at which you do politics. You must make sure that those things that you don’t like the APC for, like all this litany of bad governance criteria that they are giving to you; that the person who wants to collaborate with you does not have similar tendencies as the APC.

So, what we’re trying to do is to make sure that people don’t capitalise on the bad performance of Tinubu to just ride on the wave of that anger and bring someone who is worse. We saw it, and I was shouting since 2014 when they said Goodluck Jonathan was not performing. I said, yes, I know Jonathan very well, we attend the same church, he respects me a lot, and I respect him as an elder brother. But he took the disaster as he did. But as for these people who are coming, they are going to be worse. I knew Muhammadu Buhari very well. I knew him intimately.

I knew Buhari does not have a calendar to know which century he belongs to. But they went and brought him and people were rejoicing, oh Buhari action, which action? And these people know what they are doing by bringing Buhari. Tinubu and all of them, you could see now that when he was doing their 2015 transition, Tinubu gave him the legacy as to why he brought all of them, because he wants to achieve his own aim.

So, if you haven’t learned from that, when are you ever going to learn that now that Tinubu is also not good, you want to make sure that someone worse than Tinubu is not smuggled in and then people will say thise in Tinubu’s time were slightly better. I don’t want to experience that.

That’s why each of them that came, I interviewed them. Some are doing better than the other. Who are these people? You know them. These people came to the party and they’re gone. They have gone to do their own thing, which is not my business to be focusing on them. But many of them, when they came to us, we said, don’t even open your mouth, just go away because you are a fraud.

So it is true that you singularly disallowed the coalition to involve the SDP?

I did not singularly disallow it, we disallowed it, but I convinced my party people that if we cannot help the Nigerian people, let’s not kill them. It’s better to not enter government than to enter government and become a union of the people. You can’t do it. It’s just not right. Nigeria has a lot of people who have never tasted government before.

All of the people who have been in government since independence, they are not up to one per cent. Nigeria is not short of talents. So if you want to stop what is going on, you need to bring fresh people or select among those who have served before, who have relatively good records. And you have to see that the motivation is not about. Some people are incapable of being outside government for six hours.

They will be disoriented because they are used to free car, free housing, passing toll without paying, free medical care and all of these are the things that defend in the name of fighting for you. They just can’t survive without government perquisites.

They are ministers, tomorrow we will put them as the chairman of a nursery or primary school, but they will go there. They just must drive an SUV car with a policeman in front of it. And that is what is motivating their politics. So, it’s their style. I’m not saying they should not be in politics.

All motives are welcome in politics but there can’t be various motives in my own party. I’m not saying to that Nigerians should not choose bad government but just don’t cry to me when the consequences of bad government comes. And don’t say I have no alternative. The main reason why I entered politics and devoted my life to politics was because of that lie that Nigerians were telling themselves that they had no alternative. There is an alternative.