Prince Adewole Adebayo is a successful lawyer and business man. He will be on the ballot of the 2023 presidential elections for the Social Democratic Party SDP. Prince Adebayo said that governance has collapsed under Buhari and that religion should not be used as yardstick for performance, rather, Nigerians should check records of all Presidential candidates. MYKE UZENDU was there for The AUTHORITY.
What is your thoughts about your religion to woo voters ahead of the upcoming presidential election.
The person who questions my faith the most is me, because I know the precept of what it takes to be a Christian. As Christians and Muslims, it is our work, in terms of what we do in private and public life in service that should speak for us. We should not use religion to claim employment, votes. Religion should be used as moral guidance. Former president of the United States said the presidency is a lonely place that sometimes your last recourse is to be on your knees.
Is that why President Buhari said he is eager to leave the office?
We saw it before you guys saw it.
Who is your vice presidential candidate and his faith?
Let me tell you how the SDP behaves and our perspective to it. We do not question people’s religion, but we are sensitive to the country, because we are of diverse community, so you have no shortage of good people, men and women and different faiths. In SDP, we believe that Nigeria is not only about Muslims and Christians, we also recognize other faiths. We respect everybody’s sensitivity, identity and beliefs and it is our hope one day we would not push this argument to a ridiculous point where people will begin to ask that are you the only two people here.
I am happy to be a Christian because it is religion I have serious faith in, and I grew up in an environment where half of my cousins are Muslims, so it is not an issue for us. As a lawyer, both here in Nigeria, America and other places, I have confronted very good Muslims and very good Christians and I have prosecuted very terrible Muslims and very terrible Christians. My message to Nigerians on this issue is that we can raise this argument only for one reason, to judge the ability of that person who is going to hold the public office to have a sense of sensitivity, because that’s the only reason with which you can judge him.
The first duty of a person who wants to be president is the choice of the vice presidential candidate. That’s why I am asking who is your vice presidential candidate and this faith.
We would announce that, because my party must be there when the announcement is made. What I want you to understand is that since we came into civil rule in 1999, Christians have ruled, Muslims have ruled. In fact, both have ruined us. So, we should not use religion as a major criterion. All the evils that have been done in the last 8 years was done by a nominal Christian, that government didn’t look like government ruled by Christian, but history will judge that.
Next was Yar’Adua who did a bit. Then we have the last seven years being ruled by a practicing Muslim. This is not how I know Muslim to behave. This government doesn’t look to me like a government under a good Muslim. Same with the first person ruling us then, a Christian, who even had a Chapel inside the villa, but I can tell you, that is not a good standard of a Christian, because when the righteous rule, the people rejoice, we haven’t rejoiced since 1999. May be 10%, 15% parameters of choosing our leaders to show whether this person has the broad based sensitivity to a diverse environment like ours.
Why are we fixated about politics of region such that its becoming one of the parameters before one can aspire to rule Nigeria?
In politics, whatever argument you want, it’s available in abundance. What politicians do is first locate their interest, when the argument is found, it then helps their aim, but when you are working for the people as I am doing, I don’t have permanent interest other than good governance, making sure we have an accountable government, and as black people, Nigeria should not be the headquarters of shame in the world. I always ask myself, why we concerned about politics of region.
I see that the fear could be because of marginalization. Secondly, people have been wrongly educated or I should say mis-educated into believing that the presidency is a reward. It is a very difficult job. You could see president Buhari complaining the other day. It is about the honorific aspect of it not that of waving at children, going to Eagle Sqaure and watching the army march past that is just 1% of the job.
It is very a difficult job because he is carrying the burden of millions of people. So, if it is about service, people won’t be too concerned about who is there, whether he is from my place, they would think more of the deliverables. So, it is my mission in politics to interact with people who have this kind of primordial perspectives to say, yes it is important for identity sake, we have tried and president Buhari has been in power for the past 7 years. I am from Ondo kingdom; we have had a better time than people from Katsina.
What exactly are you offering Nigerians because you said you will focus of job creation, national security including food security. You just returned from a tour of the US, what exactly should we be focusing upon. What are we doing wrong?
What we are doing wrong is that we don’t have a government. We are having incumbents who spend 4 years and are replaced by their friends. They don’t do governmental functions. Just like you know when you go to your home town where the Local Government chairman there is not relevant to you, a counsellor in your street is not relevant to you, because your amenities within the environment isn’t working, and when you talk to the counsellor or the Chairman, they say they don’t have money or say the governor has taken the money. These are the ones you could see with your naked eyes, so with that, you know that the Local Government has collapsed. Let me tell you, the Federal Government too has collapsed in Nigeria. But because the Federal Government is hiding inside the villa, they blow siren and lot of noise when they are passing, you think they are busy, it’s a lie, and they are not busy. What I want to bring along is to replace these bunch politicians who are going to the villa to collect campaign reward without a functioning government.
What do you mean by that?
A functioning government, first of all, will secure the people. And the parameter of keeping your job, whether you chief of army, Chief of Air force, chief of Navy, Head of police, Head of DSS, that the first thing you will be told is that if a single Nigerian is missing and unaccounted for, remember what IBB said to Etim Inyang, then IG of the police, my friend where is Anini, because they were looking for Anini, the armed robber at that time. They were going to the council meeting when he saw him and asked him where is the armed robber. That is what you will say to your IG.
If you were the president when the Kuje Correctional Facility was attacked, what would you do differently?
It would not be attacked if I were president. The first thing a government does is to have intelligence. Secondly, is to have ability to process the intelligence. What they are doing is that they are not spending time on governance. They are doing all sort of things in the villa. They are even holding weddings in the villa now. They don’t have time to pursue intelligence, process intelligence because the recruitment is faulty. They are not even complying to the Terrorism act of 2011.
When I was overseas, people will be giving me intelligence. Why is it that they appears to careless about the problems?. Because everything to them is an opportunity to make more money.
As per the military generally, would you be tinkering with the security architecture if you were the President?
When you elect me, you would have made the greatest change because you have elected a commander in chief. With utmost respect, President Buhari isn’t doing two percent of Commander-in-Chief’s job.
You mean even being a former general?
You know in this country, we don’t examine records very well, we examine titles. When you examine records very well, you will know that what is happening now was bound to happen.
His party men said he is not the one to go to field, he only gives the order.
He doesn’t give the order because he is not aware. If you read his lamentations on twitter, that’s a confessional statement of an absent minded Commander-in-Chief.
That’s because you in the opposition has refused to put him on his feet?
But he doesn’t have feet. The problem is that you voted someone who has no feet at all. So you can’t put him on his feet. We are even trying to put him on his back, facing up. You have to respect the office, at the same time, you have to say the truth. He is not on the ballot now, so I can just sympathize with him that he has some few months to go. But we need to be alive while he still there. But the problems you need to face is that the same deafness which the electorate had in 2015 is about to happen again.
Let us be clear about what the president is. The president isn’t judged by his religion or the amount of money he can share around, or how many people are endorsing him. You judge him by his ability to do three functions. He must be able to be a commander in chief and keep you safe. You are seeing the example of lack of it now. He must be Head of state, father of all. He must not put in the mind of everybody, however minute the size it, however diverse and status is that this country doesn’t want them. Thirdly, he must be an effective chief executive.
Nigeria has a revenue problem. How do you intend to fix that?
Quite simple. Nigeria has honest problem, because they are stealing from the problem.
Are there facts to buttress this?
Yes, I have facts. For the past 3/4 months, I have been shouting that 80% of crude oil is being sold by Nigeria. Even the president acknowledged that during the Sallah celebrations. But every day, he shakes with the thieves. They are with him. He can fire them in one second. Right now as he is listening to me, he can fire them, but he wouldn’t, for political and moral bankruptcy purposes. For lack of leadership purposes, for lack of patriotism, lack of courage. For finding yourself in the office, enjoying the office but not knowing how to do the job.
Secondly, even the little that comes in being stolen by the apparatus of government. It is not me talking, it’s the government.
This government, at the inception, came up with Treasury Single Account, TSA. What would you say about it in terms of the economy and what would you prefer as alternative in terms of revamping the economy?
I have already started job creation. When I was in Washington, for many years, I have been helping the national Chambers of commerce in America. I go all over the world, fixing problems for them. I am an investment lawyer. When I was doing this investment law services, I couldn’t take investment to my country. I brought companies to this country, many of them ran away because they will go to jail Immediately, because right from the word go, people would want to use them for money laundering , people want to pack money into their contract, so they said they can’t come here.
A well run American company came here to build an airport. I was their lawyer. They came to me and said we shall forfeit the contract, we are going, because the new governor came and said we should pack the contract 10 times over again. They just gave it to a Nigerian company and left. So when I started running for president, I know that the first thing I need to do is to first of all create 30 million jobs.
I went back to national Chambers of commerce and told them if they can help me, let us talk to these companies, I am going to remove you from the conditions you are running away from, remove the corruption and bottlenecks, remove the idea of you going to the Nigerian embassy for visa where they will collect bribe from you.
I was at a press conference in Washington where I secured 30 million jobs. That’s the first phase. There is nothing fantastic about it. Any president who is facing these challenges, not the one that would borrow money to use and scatter the election and use the whole four years to pay them back. If he is focusing on what I am focusing now, there won’t be much problem. From the first day in office, I know where the jobs are coming from, Agriculture and agro allied, green energy, infrastructure. This infrastructure I am talking about, we are not going to borrow money from china and we are not going to use our money. China cannot borrow u again because they have seen that there is no executive capacity.
How do you want to create these 30 million jobs?
At the moment, there are 2000 companies that have signed up to this. When you look at the companies, from just their auxiliary services, they can generate up to 60 million jobs and many of these are willing to come over immediately. As the campaign progresses, they are coming over here. I met them in Washington. So they will be coming over here in persons to outline how the jobs would be done. They are not interested in our politics, but interested in showing you that Nigeria has the capacity to employ the entire west Africa. The only thing you need to do in Nigeria is allow agriculture to run which means you need to have security so that farmers don’t get killed.
Some people would say what you are reeling out isn’t different from what the APC did in 2015 and we are all seeing the results now. What makes your special?
The first thing the people must be suspicious of is to be suspicious of their own sense of judgement. In 2015, these people should not have succeeded in fooling anybody at all. The person they presented as their candidate had been in government before. He didn’t succeed in doing anything major. People surrounding him were the people causing the problem he claims he is coming to solve. He was flying jets that they paid for. The APC and Buhari were spending money and in competition with PDP who was printing their own dollars. These people are also the cause of the problems he says he wants to solve and they have held him hostage. What we need to do now is that we must run away from being deceived again with another hashtag. Luckily for us, these people who are various parties are one people, whether you are APC, PDP or Labour Party.
You mean Labour Party inclusive, are you saying that because Peter Obi was once the party’s vice presidential candidate?
Yes, but not only that. They were not there for a day; they also had prominent roles they played. Labour is extension of PDP. Labour borrowed PDP body. What I am saying is that don’t be deceived by labelling. The external establishment now are in three parties in order to fool you. First time, they were in PDP. Second time, the new PDP which was the soul of it, muffed with the then ACN and others, created the second PDP, which is the APC.
Buhari was borrowed as a face because people thought he was a legend that he came from heaven directly. What they are now doing in order to create that third branch of that same camp, because the person who was VP to the PDP four years ago is now claiming to be labour and the senator (Obi’s vice) while in the Senate, never passed any sensible bill, is his vice. I am saying this because young people follow hashtag and things like that, just like they followed hashtag eight years ago.
Your party isn’t attaching any state as its own, besides, it not really popular like others. So what are your chances of emerging president in 2023?
Our chances are quite bright. Let me tell you why we are not making noise. We have refused to be become a refugee camp for the decampees. Even the people who went to Labour came to us first. Peter Obi came to SDP first. We set exams for all of them but they all failed the exams. Peter obi failed our exams. Bola Tinubu failed the exams.
