Prince Adewole Adebayo was the 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In this interview, he speaks on Nigeria’s 65th independence anniversary, politics of 2027 and Nigeria’s political landscape under the administration of President Bola Tinubu, ANAYO EZUGWU reports
What has your party, the SDP been doing since the 2023 elections?
What we have been doing after the election is to let people know that the conversation continues because while we were campaigning, part of our talking points was for the immediate electorate.
Most of it was for a longer vision about the country and it wouldn’t matter who won the election or who lost the election. Some issues would not leave us, and the earlier we build consensus around those issues, the better, so that hopefully they will not be subject of campaign.
We are probably one of the few countries in the world that are still campaigning about corruption. Every decent person knows that corruption is not good. It’s not a political programme. It is admitted by most people in the world that a corrupt society will not go anywhere.
So, if we all agree about that, no one will choose a president with respect to the attitude towards corruption because all presidents, all presidential candidates, all politicians and all leaders at different levels of our national life will agree that corruption is bad. The fact that we need to be united around certain principles, like fairness, justice, equity and rule of law, should not make them to be political programmes.
We had a guy, President Murray, who said the tenets of his administration would be rule of law. And I asked him, do you have an option? I mean, we have a government, but that’s the programme.
There was a debate as to where they were putting the 7-Point Agenda. They were trying to put rule of law as part of the 7-Point Agenda. And I was thinking, rule of law cannot be manifesto. Rule of law has to be basic, what everybody has to follow.
These are the conversations we’ve been having after the election, so that people can know that these are not election issues. These are basic and fundamental issues of how to define our society and how to organize ourselves. So that’s what we’ve been doing since that time.
Are you still in the SDP or in another party now and what are your political leanings, thoughts and plans for 2027?
I joined the SDP in 1991, when I was 19 years old and even when the party was banned, I didn’t join any other party. As close as I was to those who were running the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in those days, I didn’t join the party even though some of them were my clients.
I have relationships with some of them, and when they started the All Progressives Congress (APC), I didn’t even consider it for a second. So, basically, the only political party I’ve ever joined in my life is the SDP, which I joined when I was 19 years old, and that’s where I will remain, unless the party ceases to exist.
There are rumours that SDP is working for the APC or open to negotiations. What do you have to say about that? We don’t know about the rumours and talk, what I know is what the SDP is doing officially. I only participate in what the SDP is doing officially but what I find out is that people who are in political parties tend to have loyalty outside their parties. I think it’s part of the problems we try to solve by bringing more ethical leaders.
But 100 per cent of my own politics is done inside the SDP. And this day and time, there is no way you could have relationship with people that there won’t be evidence of it. They will see you with them, you will take a photo with them, they will trace their money to you or they will trace the activity to you.
So, if you really want to know where somebody belongs to, other than just passing rumour or propaganda, you will know. There may be elements of people in the SDP who have sympathies for other parties but what we tend to do is when we catch them, we relegate them or expel them. But for the SDP, we know it has three different epochs.
The SDPI joined in 1991 was the SDP of the Third Republic and if you look around those who are in politics today, many of them were in the SDP. There were two political parties that time; SDP and the National Republican Convention (NRC). It looks like those who went to the NRC are not as successful as those who went to the SDP.
You don’t see many of the NRC people any more. But the SDP ones, you’ll find them. So, sometimes when we go out, we meet them. This is always our party, we’re all together and things like that. So, if President Tinubu and many of the people around him still have that nostalgia about SDP, that’s one epoch.
It takes a while to get a political party that the majority will be people who are selfless, patriotic and who are doing politics because they want nothing out of it other than a better country
The second epoch of the SDP was when Chief Alaye came with Pat Utomi and so many of them like that, and they started and they revived the SDP. And so anywhere I go now and I say I am a leader of the SDP; Utomi is quick to say “no, that’s my party. The position you are now, I used to be there.”
The third epoch is what we are doing now, which is the SDP of young people who don’t have the history of having occupied any office in the SDP. We just want to revive the little to the left principle of it, which incidentally coincides with chapter two for our constitution, fundamental objectives and direct principles of state policy.
How will the SDP build a strong, sincere party with ethos and manifesto, given that most parties are just platforms for seizing power?
It is possible and it has happened. When it comes to manifesto, you have the school of politicians and governors. You can ask the director to ask your students to analyse, do a comparative analysis of manifesto and look at the SDP and juxtapose it against what the constitution says. So, the manifesto is okay for us, we are fine with the manifesto. And you also remember that our manifesto did not arise from emergency company of words put together for election.
It is the product of the Centre for Democratic Studies. At that time, there was some ideological grounding that, along with the party, was founded. And I thank Chief Alaye, Prof. Pat Utomi and others who, when they had the opportunity to create a new political party, decided to say, let’s go back to the SDP. Kofalaye was there, he ran for president on that platform. So, the ideology is okay.
What is required is democratic patience, because in my background, we are asked to do revolutionary patience. Not everybody wants to be revolutionary like me, so we say democratic patience, which is that I am running for president on ideas. I will do my best to win based on those ideas and if I win I will govern based on those ideas but if I don’t win and my time passes, another person is coming to carry that torch.
MKO Abiola is not here but I’m running on farewell to poverty and insecurity. I’m running on the last programme; we still play the same Abiola mantra, the same jingle we’re running now in Abuja for the area councils and for Dr.Obinna who is running for the Abuja Metropolitan Area Council (AMAC). He came to me and he had done his entire manifesto, logo and everything. It’s following the same thing which the SDP used when Wole Adesina won the election.
The first election to elect the mayor of Abuja was won by the SDP in 1992; the same thing that he used to campaign; same logo was added to the Abiola, so it continues. So, a time will come, maybe it will be in 2089, they will say SDP is 100 years old, so there will be a political party but that’s the idea so it’s not about the bio fans club gathering together and I give them money and they are running after me.
This is a political party that is going to be available and the principles are well known, so that’s the party already and you can see that the party is already showing sign of discipline and discipline is getting things to run well. Anybody who is from outside and comes to SDP to try to use SDP processes or institutions or SDP persons for qualities other than what the party is set up for, will be suspended or disciplined; the party wants to run itself.
I know that Nigerians believe that maybe it’s almost impossible for us to have a party of selfless people. But, I think if you come to the SDP, you will see a party of selfless people. And the struggle continues within us.
The dialogue continues within us because there are elements, even when I ran for president, there are elements that worked against us who were in the party. We had party agents who would not show up; party state chairman would collect our agent card and then go and give it to another political party.
I went to Kwara, discovered that from our research sheets, we scored 122,000 votes, but they recorded only 22,000 for us. And the people who were working with us; who were supposed to protest and do everything thought that they could have a relationship with the ruling party and then they messed that up.
We’re changing those leaderships; we’re bringing new people in. So, it takes a while to get a political party that the majority will be people who are selfless, patriotic and who are doing politics because they want nothing out of it other than a better country.
What is your opinion on Nigeria at 65; the journey so far?
For Nigeria, we started accidentally. There is no great philosopher or great thinker within our population who says, let us all come together. Let me unite people.
If you study the history of some kingdoms, some countries, some societies, it will be indigenous, maybe warring tribes, warring groups, disunited by many factors, by politics, but united by culture. And a great leader rises among them and says, let me unite my people. That’s not the history of Nigeria.
The history of Nigeria is an external necessity for trade. So, Nigeria started merely as a trade zone, just like these days you have free trade zone and export processing zone.
It’s like the arbitrariness with which they created areas for the discos in the power sector. So, we created Lagos disco, Ibadan disco, Benin disco, Yola disco, different discos. That’s how Nigeria was to the Royal Niger Company.
It was just a trade zone and that trade zone was made up of different kingdoms and communities.
Somehow, for the efficiency of the business, they decided to hand it over back to the British government and run it as a protectorate and part of it as a colony. And then after a while, they ran it as protectorates, you know, next to each other. In 1914, they said let’s amalgamate them.
