Prince Adewole Adebayo was the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election. In this interview, he speaks on President Bola Tinubu’s two years in office, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU writes
The belief is the politics should be about greater public interest, not for personal or group interest. Is that what we are seeing today in Nigeria against the backdrop of reports that we are better of in 1960 than we are today?
Well, democracy is a blank cheque and it’s a unique kind of cheque because the beneficiaries are allowed to write their names or whatever names they write on it, the amount they want, the bank they want and sign it.
Now, if the majority, instead of writing their own names, are writing the names of politicians, writing amounts the bank doesn’t have, and don’t remember their own signature, it is the fault of the writer of the cheque. Democracy wants you to be who you want to be.
So, you will see that some of the governors were civil servants, some of them were hybrid businessmen, some of them were completely jobless, but they’ve used the opportunity of democracy to turn their own lives around. They are now former governors, former ministers, former vice president, former president, former this, former that. And some are still coming back for other things.
It is left for the Nigerian people to use these politics to turn their own lives around, by ensuring that they do not give their votes or support or sentiment in favour of those who are grabbing state power or who are capturing it. To capture the state is not a one-step episode. It is that you go and grab the subset of the state. You grab political power, some grab money, then they start to grab state institutions one by one.
Even right now, you will see that those who ruined the opportunities of the people, those who have not allowed the country to see one day of progress, are now the ones claiming to be the opposition now.
Very soon, they will claim to be the media. And before long, they will completely grab the judiciary and law enforcement. So, this is the situation you find in a democracy where there’s an abdication on behalf of those who are responsible.
It appears we are losing ground with successive governments. How did we arrive at that?
We are losing ground the more because if you take a bottle of any drink, and you keep diluting it with water. First, you take a bottle of any drink and you put a bottle of water, the first mix will give you half of the taste.
Now, if you take that diluted one, and you put another bottle of water, and you further dilute it, as you are doing each dilution, you are getting farther and farther away from the original taste.
The appropriate government for us in this model we have chosen was the government that resembled as much as what the British left; an independent civil service, a parliament where people discuss policies, a more diversified power base or power bases, that one has its own weaknesses, but it has more advantages and more growth at various levels.
So, regression has been on all spheres, public service, quality of polities, state of the economy and all that. Is that what you are saying?
The only area we have made progress, undoubtedly, is in numbers. That’s population growth. In our nominal population, we’ve made progress; it has grown. The figures in our budgeting have grown because of inflation.
Our economic base has grown, but because you have to do a comparison of your economic base with your population, so in absolute numbers, the participation has grown in the economy, but in relative numbers, participation has reduced because you have more ratio unemployed people, even though you have more people in employment.
So, overall is that the Federal Government over time has now culminated in the unspeakable economic disorientation that President Bola Tinubu is displaying.
But if you come down over time, you will see that the various governments that we have had, have lost control of the economy because they do not know how to stimulate. You know that we made a turn in 1986, when General Ibrahim Babangida introduced Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP).
The escapism that was inherent in SAP was that you could move away from government being directly responsible for generating productivity, that you could stimulate productivity by policy and by liberalization.
The problem with that is that it’s like you, getting a remote control to help you control television set, instead of using your hand to tune it.
You’re still responsible to ensure that your remote control has a battery, that it’s functional, because ultimately, the fact that you’re using a remote control does not mean that you’re not responsible for tuning the channel or switching it off and on.
You are only trying not to do it with proximity and directness. So, the government assumed that without liberalisation, they could just abandon everything. So, because I’ve not privatised or commercialised, I don’t care, for example, if something works.
There is nothing about the coalition that is exciting… The real thing that is going to upset the President in 2027 is the genuine anguish of Nigerian people
Tinubu’s economic policies made reference to being liberal in nature. To what extent have they contributed to where we have found ourselves today?
t everybody in Nigeria knows that I do not subscribe to these policies, but same way I don’t subscribe to some of the policies in other countries where I’ve lived, for example, in the United States.
You will see it now in the witnesses that President Trump is seeing. That’s why they are talking of how to boost tariff. That’s why they are now having other difficulties. That’s why they are sustaining their economy just by massive borrowing, which is not valuable to a country like Nigeria.
But there are countries that implement these policies that I don’t agree with, even though the consequences will come down the line, but they are working harder. They are more attuned. They have more sensitivity to any change in data.
The problem I have with President Tinubu is the same problem I had with President Buhari and President Jonathan and others before them, is that if you are running a liberal economy, you have to be awake. You have to be sensitive to all the indices. But first, you must be able to have fiscal discipline and monetary efficiency. You don’t have either. You have to be able to work on social fiscal discipline.
Would you say it’s a survivor fight for the president in reaction to this evolving coalition, as it were?
The president is politically savvy enough to know that the coalition is not his problem. He knows the people in the coalition, they are all friends.
There’s hardly anybody you’ll find in the coalition, who you cannot find 10,000 pictures of them with the president, they are all together. The real thing that the president should worry about is the resentment of the people and the problems that people are facing in reality.
It is not the coalition that has been putting pictures and billboards all over. If you are going to Asokoro from the central area, you will see inaugural board pictures of the president and the first lady already dancing ahead of 2027; so that one is not put there by coalition. You go to the airport road in Abuja, you go to many parts of Abuja, you will see billboards put there by their political contractors.
If you go to Lagos or anywhere, where there’s a billboard, you will see a large picture of President Tinubu swearing himself in 2027 while people are hungry. So, that is not done by a coalition. There is nothing about the coalition that is exciting beyond the fact that the government itself is not governing.
The coalition, some of it is a mix of people trying to take advantage of the vulnerability of the president because he’s not governing the country well. Some have to do with some other people just trying to get busy. The real thing that is going to upset the president in 2027 is the genuine anguish of Nigerian people.
Don’t you think that there has to be a credible alternative for people to channel their anger in terms of support?
No, the fortune of Nigeria will not fall by way of coalition. The fortune of Nigeria will fall by political class having an agreement with Nigerian people.
Personally, if you ask me, I should know about this coalition. I am a leader in a political party that is receiving quite a number of people. We welcome anyone who wants to participate in politics, but we know that there have been coalitions in the past and all of that.
We are more interested in the change of heart than those who are on President Tinubu’s side. You could not be three years ago saying President Tinubu is the best thing to have come to Nigeria. And while we’re telling you is not correct and suddenly you realized now that we were right.
Without thinking deeply, beyond just Tinubu alone, you must think deeply that if I could be wrong on something as obvious as Tinubu could not make a good president, maybe there are other things I’m wrong about. If you’re on the side of the people, President Tinubu, with all his debauchery and all his governors, doesn’t stand a chance.
The only thing that can save Tinubu between now and 2027, if we are dealing with a credible political process, is to stop all of this politics, reduce it as much as possible, and focus on administration, and follow the guidelines that we have been giving in all these interviews and are written in the Constitution of Nigeria. That’s all. But the coalition and all of that, this you will see all the time.
The political class is very clever. They know how to come together and take power and enjoy it together. And when the public is beginning to suspect that they have been taken for a ride, the political class will now divide themselves into two and send some of them to the opposition and be shouting together with you and get you distracted.
At the end of the day, if you are not careful and you are not determined and you don’t build a structure, towards the end, they will all coalesce together again and leave you in the dust.
That is why this time around, in our party, the SDP, the leadership and the membership, and to other Nigerians, we are saying, raise a new political class. Retire not just only president Tinubu but anyone who has been associated with this establishment politics that has not worked for us.
