Prince Adewole Adebayo was the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 elections. In this interview, he speaks on Nigeria’s security challenges and the performance of the All Progressives Congress (APC) administration, ANAYO EZUGWU reports
How would you describe the state of the nation?
From the point of view of governance and primary duties of the different tiers of government, so many things still lie unattended to, and the dire situation that we all find ourselves remains unchanged. There are indications that the government has lost its map, and it’s just waking up every day to react to any new incident, whether local or international. There is no rational observer who would say this is the trajectory of where the Bola Tinubu presidency was headed to.
What is happening in November 2025 was what they planned in November 2024. President Tinubu has lost control of his own government, which he hasn’t had time to put together to start with. And no matter how much you speak for the government, you cannot say that where they are now in 2025 was where they planned to be when they were planning a year ago or two years ago.
They are definitely in the wilderness, and if the captain of the ship cannot determine the direction the ship is going, he has no control over the speed of the sail. The passengers on that ship are entitled to a new captain, or they give up on that ship, and you cannot give up on Nigeria. So, it is easier to say that we have a bad government in a good country than to say we have a bad country, because I know that this country, if well managed, is second to none.
Some people accuse the opposition, including you, of exploiting the current misfortune under the Tinubu administration just to score political points. Do you think your criticism is actually helping the country right now?
If the President wants to be helped, from what we say, he can pick up enough help. But if you say we are making capital of the misfortune, then they are producing too many misfortunes. Again, if you think that the opposition is taking advantage of your misfortune, then you should reduce the amount of misfortune you have.
You can’t fail in every aspect and expect that people are not going to remark on those failures. Are you saying that a community with people running helterskelter, where even people in your administration don’t feel safe, where even the community you come from doesn’t feel safe, is okay?
The vast resources of Nigeria are located in the northern part of Nigeria. The entire North is closer to Somalia than it is to what Nigeria used to be. So, you cannot Afghanistanize your own country and expect people to sing your praises. You cannot take every index that you met and make it worse. Unemployment is worse, inflation is worse, insecurity is worse, international profile of the country is worse.
You either don’t have the competence to appoint ambassadors, or you can’t find competent ambassadors to appoint. Either side of the coin is a failure. So, you can’t police the state, you can’t secure the state. You don’t even have enough mental capacity to explain your failure.
President Donald Trump of the United States recently repeated his description of Nigeria as a disgraced country. Do you believe that is a fair description?
I don’t agree with President Trump that we’re a disgraced country. But, he’s speaking the language of international diplomacy. When you see the president of a country, you say Nigeria is here. So, what he meant is that the Tinubu administration is a disgraced government.
The Secretary to the Government of the Federation suggested that recent surges in attacks may be linked to foreign interest, particularly from America. Does that explanation hold any water for you?
It is like a goalkeeper saying that the attacker or striker from the other side is shooting the ball too fast. That’s an admission of failure. Your job is to catch the ball. So, whether the attack is coming from within or from without, your responsibility is to stop the attacks and every tool in the world that you need to stop the attack is given to you. But n every occasion, at every opportunity, you have failed to use these tools for what they are meant to be used for. Nigeria has enough money, enough manpower, enough institutional experience in the military and enough association of friendship all over the world, enough technological and scientific and other skills within to defend this beautiful country.
You don’t believe there is any explanation that makes sense as to why Nigeria is struggling with the scale of insecurity that we are dealing with right now…
The explanation that makes sense is that we have a failed government; that’s it. There’s no other way because the kind of challenge or challenges that we are facing is one-tenth or one per cent of what Ukraine is facing, or what other countries are facing, including America itself is constantly facing.
Do you see the current insecurity as an existential threat to Nigeria?
Of course, it is. We have two problems. Problem number one; non-state actors have infiltrated the government. The government is absent-minded, absent from duty. It is also deceiving itself, politically in a way to elongate its tenure even though it cannot do the basic function. Those are the problems.
The citizens have been coping. They should have been on the streets long ago, but I do not recommend that. I recommend that you should be patient, but our people have been overly patient.
The disturbance in the country is now causing international concern to a point where world powers are debating whether to take over the whole thing, as if we’re not a growing concern. The manner of their intervention, the angulation of the argumentation, is suggesting that they have a particular section of their population that they feel sympathetic towards, and that is going to create internal alienation in the country.
Do you believe there is a link between the strong international rhetoric and what is actually happening here, especially when we see so much exaggeration of the casualty figures?
You cannot use embellishment when you are talking about human life. If 50 people were killed, and somebody goes to write 500 people were killed, it makes no difference about the fact that 50 people were killed but the scale and intensity says a different thing. A country that wants to succeed does not make that kind of argument.
It makes no sense. So, the numbers don’t matter. If your house caught fire, and somebody goes to report your house got burnt down, you cannot argue that only half of my house is burnt down. That’s not the issue; seek help. Your house shouldn’t be burned down in the first place.
The way Nigerians are being killed like chicken; if there’s another country where birds are dying like that, or dogs are dying like that, the international community would ask: Why are dogs dying like this in this country? It is not a responsible argument from a government communication point of view to argue with people who are reporting real tragedies in your country. If people were killed in Cameroon, and they reported that people were killed in Nigeria, you can argue and say, no, those people were killed in Cameroon, not in Nigeria.
There have been some military deployments and rescues in recent weeks and the President has ordered the withdrawal of police personnel from VIP protection duties. What do you make of the government’s response so far? I don’t have police guarding me. However, what I can let you know is, number one, nothing’s wrong with the armed forces. They have the wrong commander-in-chief; full stop. It was the elected commander-in-chief. You can elect the wrong person. You can buy the wrong shoe that doesn’t fit your feet. So the issue is, you can use someone to buy the wrong shoe and have foot poisoning.
The problem facing Nigeria today is that the commander-in-chief is not a good commander-in-chief. He can make a good commander-in-chief out of himself if he wants, but he’s neglecting that mission. I’m happy that he also knows that he doesn’t have to go all over the world on a fashion parade; that he can actually sit at home, go to the situation room and interact with his security chief.
He didn’t go to South Africa; he shelved some of his international engagements to stay back home. We are talking of episodic, reactive actions. We are not talking of systematic work of a commander in chief. I saw a picture of the president talking with the chief of army staff. As commander-in-chief, that’s not how I’m going to do it.
So, he needs to take a cue from previous commanders-in-chief. Ibrahim Babangida, quite articulate, talk to him, no matter what your political disagreement with him, he’s got to know how to be a better commander-in-chief. I did all of those things, preparing myself to be a commander-in-chief. Tinubu is not commanding the armed forces properly; he’s not interacting with them.
When you say that this government has failed Nigerians, you make governance appear so simplistic, is it that simple and you’re saying that the government is intentionally looking away from the people?
The first enemy of the government is the government. The first enemy of the people is the government. You cannot commit a crime and last one week, one month, if you don’t have government people cooperating with you. I cannot go now to the bank manager in my bank and say to them that I want to withdraw six million naira. They will not answer me.
They will say scam, money laundry or whatever but people are paying millions of naira in ransom. The people who collect the ransom are not worried where they are carrying the money to. If you want to try it out, just keep collecting your salary and taking it to cash. When it’s up to ten million, try to take it to the bank.
The bank will tell you all kinds of stories. What I’m letting you know is that President Tinubu, in my own humble view, has lost control of his government. He needs to organise his government, make sure that he understands that police covers this country effectively because every local government in Nigeria has a police division. There’s a Divisional Police Officer (DPO). In some large or massively populated local government, you have more than one division of police there. Are you telling me that in Eruku, in Isapa, and all those places, there’s no division there?
Are you saying that if there’s a youth corps member in Eruku criticizing the APC or criticizing the government, they will not go and arrest the person? This is a government that could capture somebody in Nairobi, Kenya, and bring here for trial and sentence the person but they cannot capture people who are going around.
