2027: SDP won’t trade ideals for power- Adebayo

The 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, during the week spoke with the media on Nigeria at 65, his political thought and plans for 2027 general elections, the state of the economy, and SDP’s ideological politics. Excerpts 

What has your party, the SDP been doing after the 2023 general elections?

Well, 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 program. 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. So that’s what we’ve been doing since that time.

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 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 this APC, I didn’t even consider it for a second. So, basically, the only party, 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, but I can’t join any other party. I will remain the SDP.

There are rumours that the SDP is working for the APC or open to negotiations, what do you have to say about that?

Well, we don’t know 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 political party. I think it’s part of the problems we try to solve by bringing more ethical leaders. But 100 percent 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. The SDP is an independent party. Our ideals are different. And it’s very rare to see a true SDP person that has interest in the APC or the PDP. It’s very hard because the idea of what they are doing is totally opposite to what we would do. So why would you, especially when the APC is open and in government, why would you waste your time to come to a more ideological party that has more work to be done, less money and less spread, when you can join APC in the village the next day and take a photo with the president.

How would SDP build a strong party with ethos and manifesto, given that most parties are just platforms to gain political 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 a Centre for Democratic Studies. So at that time, there was some ideological grounding that, along with the party, was founded. And I thank Chief Alaye, professor 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. That’s why, 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 all his manifesto, logo and everything. It’s following the same thing which the SDP used when Wole Adesina won this election.  The first election to elect the mayor of Abuja was won by the SDP in 1992. 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 biofans 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. And 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.

With your style of politics and patriotism, it shows the SDP is highly principled politically. Isn’t it? 

There are people in the party that I don’t even speak to at all. I don’t preach to them, I don’t speak to them because I know how their heart bleeds for the country. So when they have reason to make a decision in the party I don’t want to disturb myself. I know that they are going to do what is right. But there are other people whom we have to be discussing with. There was a candidate in one of our recent government relations. He just joined us and for some reason the party leadership thought he should be the governorship candidate. I was overseas, I came back, I saw him and I said, okay. He said he wanted to meet with me. And he came with a brilliant way by which he could bribe voters. And I said, I’m sorry, we don’t want to win that way. You know, if this is how we cannot do it. So, when he said in his former party, he used to help them, but they never made him a candidate. Now he has been made a candidate, he wants to help us. I said, I’m sorry, I can’t do it. But talk to other people. And he talked to other people, more and more people are saying, well, we can’t do it. You know, and of recent, when they were putting together this coalition, they thought that maybe some of us were too rigid and we didn’t want to win. And when we started talking to other leaders in the party, the same question of ideology, purpose and credibility were being asked.

So it’s not like you go to other parties and say, well, the other party says, if you give us 500 million, you give us 1 million euros, you can take our party. But in SDP, nobody’s will tell you that. They will ask you questions about this and that. So those are the things that give me hope that I’m not wasting my time in the SDP and that I’m not wasting my resources and I feel happy about it. We have issues from time to time but I don’t look right or left; I just look straight forward and if I’m fooling myself and I’m the only one who is sincere, I go to my grave but I know that definitely I’m not the only one. There are many people, old, young, male and female, who are committed to Nigeria and they’re working through the SDP.

What is your opinion about Nigeria at 65, the journey so far?

I think that there are two journeys taking place, like a parallel universe. There’s a journey of the country as a whole, and there are individual journeys inside the country. And for Nigeria, we started accidentally. There are no great philosopher or great thinker within our population who says, oh, 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.

On the economic side, we’ve managed to mismanage ourselves completely because our GDP, the GDP of Nigeria today should have been the GDP of any state only, not even up to the GDP of Lagos or Oyo, or Kano, or Anambra, or Rivers so we have done poorly in our economy and there are three principal reasons for that. We’ve stolen and exported a lot of our wealth overseas and a lot of this wealth is now being frozen. Many of the people who took the wealth can’t invest well and they can’t recover a lot of the properties that they have there. So, we’ve exported our money. There are two parts of the exportation of our money. So many people will buy public servants so this money is taken away by families, friends and proxies. It is a loss to the economy. You will excuse me but our GDP is so small that a country of three million elsewhere has a bigger GDP than us. A country of 10, 20 or at most 60 million, has better GDP than us. So, it is our money being stolen and taken overseas. And the second part of the money being stolen is the money being stolen through over-invoicing and other wastages to foreign elements who come to help them take the money. So now, the second reason our economy is doing poorly is lack of opportunities. We are not employing our people because the elites are claiming money they don’t need.

So the third element why our GDP is small is because of poor recording of the GDP. Recently, we did rebasing. When Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala was minister, we did a rebasing and the GDP shot up. But a lot of people have been captured in our GDP. And now, you can build a house in many parts of Nigeria, build a house, rent the house to the tenants and collect your rent. And today, I can tell you, statistically, there will be up to 200,000 people who pay their house rent today. And I’m not sure that it will be recorded anywhere, because rent income is not recorded. Maybe some states are trying to adapt. So those are the three reasons in terms of the economy.

Well, in the social aspect, the similarities have increased. We are learning each other’s cultures and we are blending. We are true Nigerians now. In terms of international journey, Nigeria went from respectability to mediocrity, odium, fire and to a joke. And to tell you what the joke is, for the past two years plus, we’ve had no ambassador in any country. It’s up to the president whether he wants to appoint ambassadors or not. But nobody’s complaining. We have no partners who are scratching their head. How do we cooperate with Nigeria? We need an ambassador. We need Nigeria’s voice. And if you look at the most recent Security Council, the General Assembly meetings of the United Nations, there are not many issues that they say, oh, we have to wait for Nigeria. Even Kenya went to say, I will want to be Security Council.

Health care, we are bad. It’s very bad in health care because if you look at the way we started, the UCH University College Hospital in Ibadan was never going to go below number two. It’s either the number one in the entire continent or number two. So, sometimes the hospital in London will come first and the UCH will come second, or the one in Brisbane, or the one in Ottawa. We’re never going to come fourth; not possible. And if you remember, and when Queen Elizabeth came in the year 2000 for the Millennium Visit, and they were commissioned in the Millennium Park in Abuja, she was being taken around Nigeria, but she remembered, and said, one of those hospitals in the woods, the beautiful hospital in the woods, and none of the people taking her, going around, remembered it all, and they had to say, because she remembered going to see that hospital, and admired that hospital mightily, UCH, and the King of Saudi Arabia, many leaders who come to that hospital for heart bypass, for all that complicated procedures, and they would say they were visiting Nigeria, but we know they were coming for medical tourism to that hospital.