In this interview, the presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) at the 2023 election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, harped on the readiness of the opposition for the 2027 elections, the performance of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the controversy surrounding the Electoral Act, and the role of politicians who recently moved into the opposition. He also explained why he believes Nigeria needs a complete political reset rather than alliances among members of the old political establishment. ADA OKAFOR brings the excerpts.
INEC has announced dates for the 2027 general election, do you think the opposition is actually ready for the election?
The opposition being ready is a given. What’s more important is whether the people are ready. Democracy is about the people. If you ask me if I am ready to take over from president Bola Ahmed Tinubu and govern the country better, yes, I am ready, even today. You can drive me to the Aso Villa now and ask me to take over, you will see better results today, not tomorrow.
I am better in every fronts. I am better prepared, better intentioned, better programmed surrounded by better people and with clearer vision, closer to what the constitution wants. It is the people who need to be ready to change their government. The idea that the duty of opposition is to hold the government to account is misplaced. The primary duty to take the government to account are the different branches of government.
The National Assembly has a duty to oversee what the executive is doing and the judiciary is to ensure that both the legislature and executive comply with the law of the land. It is now left for the people to hold their elected officials accountable. My job in the opposition is to form the next government as I don’t want to choose opposition as a career. I don’t want after this election, you continue to call me opposition. I want to be called president, commander in chief. I want to be in government. I don’t want to be professional opposition.
Inter Party Advisory Council (IPAC), recently announced that it will boycott the forthcoming general elections if there is no amendment to undone the Electoral Act, is that a right decision?
The right decision is to have a good Electoral Act. You saw me at the National Assembly being tear-gased by government when they were in the process of passing the law. Mine is to ensure they pass a law which encourages the people to come and vote which deepens democracy and which makes credibility of the election a matter of law.
That is what the government needs to do. For the political party to prepare for the election while still imploring the government to do the right thing but ultimately, it is what the Nigerian people want. It is not an issue between the government and the opposition. It is a discussion that all Nigerians need to have which is that the Electoral Act as currently passed and signed by president Tinubu, is it what Nigerians want?
Is it so?
I don’t think so. I think it is more about saving the regime and saving their own skin, not losing control of the electoral process to the people.
Do you support IPAC position of threat?
I think IPAC is right to say that if you are not going to make the rules fair and clear from the beginning, then they have the right to say they are not going to participate under that rule. But I will encourage every political party to still continue to do their under ground work and not be caught unawares.
Boycotting an election is a very drastic democratic tactic. Isn’t that effectively surrendering to the ruling party?
No, the assumption is that if almost the political parties or majority of the political parties are not in government, or don’t participate, then you don’t have legitimacy because you cannot self coronate and it is a drastic reaction to a drastic legislative coup d’etat which the people in power today made to ensure that the electoral system is put in controversy because the more we discuss this issue of electoral law and things like that, the less time we have to discuss the content of what we are bringing to government . The more people realise why am I participating in this thing, then, the voters tend to have some apathy towards the electoral process.
My approach to it is to say we keep agitating for the right thing to happen, we keep making sure we communicate to our law making bodies, the Senate and House of Representatives that what they have done, that is servicing themselves and President Tinubu, is not their constitutional duty, their duty is to get feedback from their people and amend the clauses.
Are you saying the law as it stands today does not provide a level playing field?
Of course, there is no level playing field as there are a lot of boobytraps but we have a duty to still defeat the government. The duty the Nigerians have is to make sure that no member of the national assembly returns because they are the ones who surrendered the sovereignty of Nigeria to the whims of one person, so vote all of them out. And once you vote them out, you can then pug patriots there.
But the immediate reaction of IPAC is to say if you want to rig the rules, then carry the ball and play on your own. But we are also working to see that at the end of the day that final solution to bad law is to change the law makers.
Is SDP and yourself joining the boycott if IPAC goes ahead with the threat on the 2027 election?
That is for the SDP to make a decision when it meets at its NEC next week Monday. But what I have encouraged our people and say if we could hold elections under colonial government and we could election under the military, even the military didn’t want to go but June 12 election was held under an administration that didn’t want to go, I think we would still have to hold the election as bad as the law might be to defeat the government of the day, that is what we need to do.
You seems confident in your ability and capability to defeat president tinubu and the APC. What gives you that confidence?
My confidence is in the Nigerian people, that the Nigerian people are patience and that the communication is confused coming from all sides and people are nut able to focus on where the problem lies. What politicians don’t realise is that people want to focus on where the problems lie.
So, if the opposition is saying the president and the government is not good, people will judge not only the government, they will also judge the opposition. If the people are saying the government is obviously not good but the opposition is not better either, the people will just abstain, so our duty as we are pointing out that president Tinubu government is a disaster which is obvious by every metric, we also have to organise our front in the opposition and bring clear cogent and concrete plan to the people and project people who have credibility, that is the challenge. It is not difficult beating president Bola Ahmed Tinubu blue black, we will beat him. Even in the last election where he supposedly won and we had to agree that he won because that is what the law says, you will see that the arithmetic shows that he lost because more people voted for other people than him. What we need to do now is bring more voters out to get them to understand that yes, there are many other problems but your chief problem is to get the APC out of power and your immediate solution is to remove Bola Ahmed Tinubu and then you can focus on the SDP and listen to what we are doing and check the credibility of all our candidates, if you are convinced that we can do better, you better come out and vote for us en masse.
The problem of democracy is like the market place where you are coming to sell onions while others are coming to sell different wares and products, the noise if the market can sometimes drown what you are trying to sell. What we are trying to do now is to narrowly and amplify that Bola Ahmed Tinubu is a colossal historic disaster. He is the worst of the lot of the worst elements that we may have. However, you have alternatives, instead of lamenting continuously about Tinubu, God and time have brought you an opportunity to now articulate an alternative, you don’t need to do anything extra ordinary, just go out of your house, push for the alternative, on the election day, vote for the alternative.
Luckily for us, President Tinubu has helped us by making identification parade of all the problems of nigeria and the people causing them and making sure all of them move to his own side. Now, you don’t have any confusion. Once you see that terrible broom on the election day and you don’t vote, you have already killed half of the problem.
The other half is to make sure that those who are part of the ruin of the last 26 years but who are pretending that they are now in opposition, you make sure you don’t fall for them either because if you are opposed to poor and rigged elections, and you are in the senate for 20 years you didn’t bring a single bill to improve the election, the fact that you ate in opposition now, we are not going to listen to you. If you were attorney general for eight years and you were in government when electoral bills were presented and you ask the president not to sign it, if you were senate president when the Uwais panel was submitted and you spent 20 years in the senate and 8 years as senate president and you didn’t sign the electoral bill into law, the problems you are complaining about now, you had plenty of opportunity to solve them but you didn’t, we the Nigerian people will also pack you with the establishment to make sure that Tinubu and his band of current problems don’t come to power next time who have historical record of being part of them also don’t come in, we can then have a clean break from the past if truly we are mature enough to solve our problems.
There are some faces who appear to be the new face of opposition some of whom now in the ADC, the opposition party and people have said the opposition must be united if they have to defeat the Tinubu government and APC and here you don’t seems to agree or align with them?
I don’t agree with that analysis. If your aim us to defeat Tinubu per say as one person and you don’t care about who is coming next , then you can go along that way because what that meant is that I want to dangerous Darius the great and bring in Darius the next. Nigerians are tired of bad government.
Are you willing to work with opposition because you exactly talked about malami, el rufai, david mark all in ADC?
A. How can you say you are against the infestation of insects but you are killing mosquitoes and cockroaches. You cannot be that hypocritical. There is a reason why I am opposed irreconcilably with President Tinubu, it is not because of his name, it is because of his deeds and just belief systems and actions. These people whose names you have mentioned share exactly the same. They have been in government, acted like him or was in some situations. So my being opposed to tinubu on certain basic principle automatically means that I am opposed to them too based on those principles. It’s nothing personal.
If you say you don’t want carnivorous animals because they can eat the flesh, you cannot say I don’t like lions but tigers are welcome. You need to be consistent. The establishment, some of their wings are on government, some of the wings are left outside of the government and effort to enter the government has failed and some of them are now forced to be in opposition but they are not opposed to the ideas of the president tinubu, they are oppose to the fact that they are not in his government. We are talking on behalf of the Nigerian people who have been marginalised for decades now.
In trying to come to power through peoples effort, we are not going to under cut ourselves by aligning with those immediately they are in government tinubu will be laughing at them. What we are trying to do is to make you ignore all of them, focus on on the Nigerian people. If the Nigerian people are interested in forming a government on line with the constitution of Nigeria and making sure that decency is returned to government and the public service is clean, transparent and corruption free and the people who are going to be in charge of our affairs will be servants of the people, then, they Will go to people like us, they will boycott all of them.
President Tinubu is the mascot of failure,sending all the failures we have in government since we returned to civilian rule. You cannot therefore remove him and restore those who started that he is following now. Is it rigged elections you are talking about? Election was being rigged before Tinubu became president. Talking about corruption, corruption was on before he came, he just continued and amplify that. What you need to do is clear all of them at once. If you are not prepared to clear them at once then it means they are prepare yet to liberate themselves.
So you are not willing to work with the ADC for example?
As presently constituted if I work with them, then I am hypocrite. It means that what is driving me personal hatred for tinubu, i don’t really hate corruption, non performance, indecency in government, bad governance because these people represent that. So why would you now discriminate in your fight against corruption? Are you not seeing them? Are you saying a political party who can admit somebody who dud an obvious fraud with Air Nigeria openly in the airport,are you going to say we are blind to that? Are you going to say that if you were attorney general and you are against the rule of law and now that you are in a party and now you are leading in that party and the party is comfortable with you and put on high table? Are you saying we are going to talk about rapid development of nigeria and those who were in the senate for 20 years without one single progressive law? Are we going to say that because people ate now angry either the president, we are now going to align with them when there are over 250 million Nigerians we can align with who have clean record, patriotic, served in many capacities and are very much available and energetic.
Our political parties are not garden of saints. Some round say if you must change the status quo , there would be people who may have seen the light and believe they could have done better. Are you looking for association of saints?
No. I am looking for decent people who, first, are honest.
Q. You have such a political party in Nigeria
Yes, the SDP. Come to the SDP, you will see it because we take that pledge,pledge to Nigeria my country to be faithful loyal and honest.
Q. So, SDP is a party of saints
A. No, it is a party of citizens who know that truth matters and if you have misbehave in the past, that is not a complete bad but you just admit that I have misbehave in the past and this is what I stole from the government and I am returning it and I am saying today there shall be no more corruption. We are not saying you must be a saint, you must be decent and honest. If you ate doing restitution, unemployed and broke or yiu ate trying to cover up your deeds, it is your choice. Every political party doesn’t have to look like the other. If your political party is an association of disgraced people who still want to make noise either want to use politics to cover accountability or generally feel entitled that they must be in government all the time, you can form your political party and if you are not coming on my lane, why should I have problems with you? The only time we had issues with them was when they were audacious enough to say they wanted to come to the SDP and we asked them if they have seen themselves in the mirror lately? You cannot come here. Now that they are in their own party, they are fine, we are not against them.
In the SDP, both just me but the party has taking a decision that we want to start on a clean slate.
You are saying invariably saying you are ready for 2027?
Yes,I have told my party that and I am working with my party on that. I am making sure I am going round the country to prepare the people. My presidency is in the hands of God and when Nigerians are ready. There is no other magic. If the people are ready, we would come. If they are not ready, we would continue until until they are ready.
You clichéd the party ticket in 2023, what’s the assurance that luck will smile on you this time around?
That is why you don’t see me lying down waiting fir luck to fall on my lap. I know that other people ate working hard as well while I continue to do my duty to my country, party.m as I stated this duty to the party when I was 19 years old when I joined the party 1991. There us no level in the party that I have been given assignment or service that I have not done it.
Realistically the fear is that the party may not have the national political machinery required to compete with the APC entrenched structure in 2027?
Let the political scientists have that fear. What I can let you know is that the amount of hard work that we have to do to make the party a party of the people. Remember this was the party even under the hash condition of the military that won the June 12 election that brought democracy to Nigeria and brought the first political matyre in MKO Abiola and brought June 12 which we all now observe as democracy day. It is not about competing with the APC, what we need to do is to sell the party to the people, once the people embrace the party once again, all these speculations will go by the way side. Our mind is focused on the people. When the people are ready, we will defeat any force.
Do you have the structure to face the new reality?
Our duty is to change the reality because if you continue with this reality, nigeria will ho to tell and God forbid. If we are going to change our direction, we need to change our consciousness. What the SDP is doing which is why the media is using different matrix because we are doing parade of big men, we are going to where the people are, waking the people up, getting them interested in the country and ensuring that st the end of the day they can feel proud that they bong to a political party. Once that us done, you will see that the structure which will be organic and will be as diverse as the country. They will not be idiosyncratic. It will not be rise and fall base on adewole adebayo is running it nut. It will be a solid structure that is built to last and know that you are raising cadre of Nigerians such that when you look at their political activism, their work in their community, Nigerians can begin to day after all that this democracy will work. Good politics is a precursor to good governance.
2027 election will be an election of ordinary people?
Yes because that is where we csn make a change. If it is a big man versus big man, one gang of the elite versus another, the people will not partake because they know know that if a band of tigers is struggling with a den of lions over a carcass, no other animal is going to take out of it. But if it is the movement of the people, you see that the elite will know that their time is over.
You seems to have the fear of what Tinubu represents. You said there are those who are limited to the objective of defeating Tinubu, the SDP wants to defeat the system Tinubu symbolises. What exactly do you mean?
I am not jesus but I can turn honesty into governance. I can beautify politics. The principles we are enunciating in the SDP are not principles limited to one person, these are principles any reasonable person who implement chapter 2 of the constitution will be able to achieve.
You love Nigeria and willing to do anything for the country, yet why are you not willing to work with Tinubu?
Because Bola Ahmed Tinubu is not nigeria. Bola tinubu in some way anti Nigeria. Whether he means it to be anti nigeria or not but he is working to make the country weaker and less united.
Is it fair to refer to Tinubu as the worst president?
There are three reasons why he is the worst president. One; he is the one incharge now where we have the most possible impact of bad governance. Two; he is doing it in a manner that is not it is not just incompetent, it is an organised agenda to try to personalise the country and create a Bola Tinubu singularity.
Are you angry because all the governors are now in the APC?
Those governors don’t mean anything to me because they don’t mean anything to their own people, they are just magnetised all the failures to one side. I don’t worry about that. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is disregarding the law, i just update you he has three appropriation he signed himself,ignoring all the three.
I have been an investment lawyer in many countries, there are many motives for buying a company that is distress. Sometimes you buy the company, you strip the assets and you can see that many of the companies that were privatised in Nigeria, people have taking their best assets, NITEL,NIGERIA AIRWAYS, they never revived them, took the best assets of them and left the public with the debt. A doctor who took over a sick patient if the aim of the doctor is for the patient to die so that he can inherit the property, that is what he is proving to be. He is worsening the case of Nigeria as he is applying dangerous methodology for the patient even though the patients problem is just to put him to sleep for few hours but what he is doing is likened to somebody having a bad haircut and he then cut off the head in order to solve a bad haircut. I don’t have any against him in person as I don’t him, he has not offended me in any way but the way he is running the country, there are three clear things you need to understand, your laws don’t matter. He does whatever he likes if it works for him politically. Two: don’t mention accountability. He wants to and he has succeeded in emasculate the other arms that are meant to make him accountable. Thirdly, He does not want the good health of opposition. He does not want a healthy democracy. If only he just listens to many of my suggestions including the manifesto of the SDP which he used to have with him the past,if he reads that, because he used to be in his innocent days, a member of the party, but he is now gotten to a point where he is bigger than his own party, he dictates what goes on there. In the SDP, no matter how big you are, you can’t be bigger than the party.
So you don’t credit this Tinubu government for anything?
The only credit I can give to him is keeping himself alive despite the troubles he personally faced. Beyond keeping himself, he has not done anything for the country and it is unfortunate that trillions of public money has been passing through their hands and these monies have not reflected in the welfare of the people. Even the local government where he comes from, their life isn’t better but worse. The state he comes from, their life is not better, it is worse. The region where he comes from, their life is not better but worse. You needed to go and play the tape of what happened at Ikenne(Ogun State) at Awolowo Foundation. The president was special guest of honour and he sent senior member of his government to come and speak. After i spoke, he spoke and the people were yelling at them, why are you lying to us?
Do you have a feeling that this coming election might be free and fair?
This elections have to be free and fair. We have no other alternative. They may not want it to be free and fair. We the people gave to make sure it is free and fair. We must make Nigerian people to be interested in it. It will free, fair credible when 75% to 80% of the voters show up but if you are showing up at 7%, that’s why we are reaching out to the people, don’t let anybody discourage you.
In 2025, former Kaduna state governor, Nasir El Rufai in 2025 was expelled from your party and you once said the party cannot be captured by individuals. What exactly happened between the SDP and El Rufai?
What I can recollect was that right from the beginning, his ward complained that they saw him on tv saying he had joined the SDP, I myself congratulated him, the first thing they did was to descend on me asking be how did I know he was a member of SDP? They said they are in the ward and haven’t seen him. The local government chapter said the something. The state chapter said he wasn’t a member of the party. The national headquarters investigated and found out somehow he got the membership card for himself, registered himself, created a different register, the party thought that they would reconcile and ask him to go back to his ward and do the proper thing. In the course of that, he started meeting with the national leadership of the party and started making pronouncements on their behalf which they probably caution him and he didn’t want to listen to them. They discovered also that he was trying to get lower level officers of the party to assume positions they didn’t assume because I think he couldn’t get the national officers to align with him on some issues including for example to admit all the so called coalition into the party without proper screening, without them accounting for their past contribution to the problems, when according to national officers, they warned him to desist from that, may be he thought he was still in APC or PDP, I think they just expelled him for 30 years.
Is it your view that he wanted to come and hijack the party?
I don’t think he could hijack the party. I had sympathy for him that he did not know much about the SDP even though he was experienced being in government as minister, governor, he has not been in party that has discipline before. I think he was kind of culture shock when he got here. I probably would take him for rehabilitation if I was a member of the national working committee to let him know that he is not a democrat as he doesn’t know anything about political party system. He was just somebody they saw and put in government without contesting for anything and since then he has been at the top. He has not worked like me, working from the ward level, pasted poster.
Would you subscribe to the notion of witch hunting of some former members of the APC, former AGF, Malami, Nasir El Rufai, all of these are being termed as selective prosecution. What’s your view as a lawyer?
What I know as a lawyer is that when a matter is pending in court, a lawyer doesn’t comment on it not because of the people involved but because of respect for the judiciary. Secondly, in a democracy, if somebody takes you to court, you have the right to defend yourself there but if you are being locked up without trial, that is wrong. But if you are being taken to court, you have the right to defend yourself as you assumed you be innocent anyway.
