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By Sunday Ani
As political realignments quietly gather momentum ahead of the 2027 general elections, former presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewale Adebayo, has expressed doubt about the preparedness and willingness of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to organise credible polls.
In this interview, he spoke on a wide range of issues, including the elite-driven alliances, voter apathy, internal party crisis, the credibility and readiness of the electoral system and the SDP’s strategy to build a people-powered coalition, among others.
Politics is a game of strategic alliance and numbers. It is said that anyone that is not in the coalition is inadvertently supporting the ruling party as it will be difficult to singlehandedly defeat it without a coalition. Why is the SDP running a one-man show?
Alliances and coalition are with the strategic partners in an election, and strategic partners are not necessarily politicians. Strategic partners are the segments of the society. The ultimate aim of politics is to enter government and govern. If you are talking in terms of accountability, you will not have credibility if you are aligning yourself with people who don’t believe in that either by words of mouth or by their actions or their questionable character. So, you will be inconsistent. Also, if you look at the people who make elections happen, the majority of them have not been participating. I contested for president last time and we had 93 million voters and we couldn’t get 80 percent to show up. If you want to have a coalition or an alliance, you have to find out where the 80 percent that didn’t show up are, what are the issues that bothered them and why they didn’t show up. Those are the areas the SDP is working with through strategic partners in an election. The other political parties we are having talks with from time to time, sometimes the talks are not that productive because you find out that like somebody who made serious mistake in government for the past 20 years, they haven’t learnt anything new. They are looking for an opportunity to make another mistake for another 20 years and we are not going to enable that. Some in the coalition want to play roles which they are not suited for which is purely based on ambition. The real alliance is to make sure that the Nigerians who are going to bear the brunt of bad governance and beneficiaries of good governance are participating and what the SDP is doing is bringing more people into the fold.
Your party’s activities are not really in the media. Can you tell us what your party has been doing?
What we do is to try and increase our membership. If you go round the country, you will see physical signs of it. The under reporting of what we are doing is a mixed blessing. In some setting we get frustrated. We were in kano where thousands of people joined the SDP, it wasn’t reported. On the other hand, we think it doesn’t matter. Once it is the election day you, will see the difference. The person we are trying to remove has security apparatus, he knows what we are doing. If you are a Nigerian out there and you are expecting a coalition to come and save you, you are making a big mistake. What you need to do is to talk to your neighbour who says let’s pray over this problem. Yes, you can pray but don’t stop there, you need to listen to debate, join a political party that you think is speaking the truth to you and make sure you participate in the election. Don’t join anyone who says hope is lost. You need to come out. We have religious and civic organisations and professional organisation that think they can profit from rendering services to a bad election system instead of coming to improve on it, so that we can all have a good country. We are also making sure the commitment to supporting us is not just verbal assurance. You must have actually taken a step to come and join the party, participate in the membership. In the last few months, data shows that in many remote parts of the country, there is no week that we don’t have close to 100,000 people joining. It used to be 100,000 a month and we are following up so that it’s not just number that we are going to post to INEC but quality participation. We are not closing our ears to those in the political class who want to learn the lesson of the past and coming into coalition but the real coalition discussion or corporation will start after the primaries because diffetent political parties have diffrent level of sanity in their parties. If the people you are going to talk with, like one of the talks we had recently, we found out that there was about seven antagonistic self possessed aspirants and we had to tell their representatives not to bring their virus to the discussion. We asked them to go back to their party, narrow down their own number of aspirants first before they can come to talk to us. That is the kind of mechanism we need, if it’s not going to be free for all. We are still friends. Our own kind of coalition is when you begin to see civic coalition, other groupings in Nigeria who ordinarily would but show interest in it are showing interest, that is our idea of coalition.
Some major defections happened in your party recently, is this a sign of people losing confidence and faith in your party’s capacity to drive the 2027 agenda?
No, not really. What I see is that if there is a system where 5000 left the SDP, there are chances that we probably won’t notice at all because we are bringing in 50,000, 100,000 every week. So, if 5000 decide to leave, especially if it’s because they are beholden to one particular aspirant, who is not favoured by zoning and he knows that in the SDP, he might not get the ticket and he decides to go to another party, taking 5000 people with him, we cannot complain.
You don’t seem concerned that the party is left with one member in the senate; is that what you are saying?
Not really because one person died and we lost one now, though he hasn’t officially resigned because we have to be careful. According to the law, he hasnt told us that he has left but we are hearing rumour that he is the favoured candidate of the ruling party. We cannot do anything about that. He is trying to be governor of a state. We already have quality people who will be governor. So, it’s natural that he knows we will not take him to be the governorship candidate because of the way the formula has worked out and he decides to go and seek his governordhip ambition else where. I think we have to respect that. But, the party is not about individual ambition because for everyone of such that advertises departure, there are thousands coming in. What matters to us is that we would be congratulating ourselves half way if the Nigerian people understand why the SDP is in the race; that we are about the substance of chapter 2 of the constitution and that we are trying to let you know that governance is not contest of personality, but about contest of principles. If they understand that we build that coalition across the country, others will join us. Even those who are all over the place now, that is the coalition, many will join us once they discover that Nigerian people are getting that message and that message is important. If we don’t get it now, we get the transition wrong. I must say this clearly. The objective of the SDP is deeper than the objectives of some of the people you find in the so-called coalition. They are satisfied 100 percent if the president is removed, hundred percent of their objective is achieved. But for us, that is just the beginning. Our objective is achieved only when we remove the president and replace him with a government that will not look like his own and the bad past experiences which will look like nigeria is on a sustainable part to good governance and quality leadership. That is what we are looking for, not just to throw this computer away because if you throw it away, what are you replacing it with? Yhat is where our discussion is deeper for us than them.
Do you think the INEC will be able to conduct a credible election in 2027?
I dont think they are aiming towards that. The person who is not willing to work will not be productive. It is a question of what the rest of us have to do. Remember that the INEC chairman did not appoint himself. He was appointed by the president who, I am not sure if free, fair and credible election is top on his priority. Not only that the president didn’t act alone, there is council of state where all the former leaders and experienced people in the country, all approved it without any question. And it went to the national assembly, representing all Nigerians, and they approved the appointment without question. It looks to me therefore like there was no so much uproar. Even some of the people who are now campaigning against the INEC chairman, if you go check months back, you would have read the news where they were praising the appointment. Transactionally, as they get along, they discovered he was not getting on with what they desired and they realised they need to criticise. We have blown the opportunity to choose a free and fair INEC. If we wanted to do that, we would have done that with the Uwais panel report. The chairman of ADC, for example, was the senate president as of the time Justice Uwais submitted that report; that was during late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, when David mark reviewed the report, he threw it away, and he spent eight years exacting that law. A lot of opportunities for free, fair and credible elections had been lost.
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It’s like those initial antagonists of sound electoral draft have now become the victims, right?
Yes because at that time, the poor and rigged elections favoured them and they assumed, like President Tinubu and the APC, that they will always be in the saddle. Right now, the people left to ensure free, fair and credible elections are the politicians, the media, the voters and the law enforcement angents. But, for INEC, I think the opportunity has been out already.
There is the perception from the political space that there is a subtle underground attempt to shrink the democratic space, thereby presenting President Tinubu as the sole candidate for 2027 election. Where do you stand on this narrative?
What you need to know is that we don’t need to make it sound like we are making something very creative. President Bola Tinubu is not a democrat. He hasnt even said he is a democrat. He doesn’t behave like a democrat. He didn’t come into office like the way a democrat will. He has even stopped pretending to be a democrat.
You are talking about a former member of NADECO, who fought against the Abacha dictatorship, remember?
Your operating word is former. A thief is a former honest man. Conflict is a former innocent person. There are a lot of formers. What you do now is what matters. You could see that he is not a stakeholder in finding democracy for Nigeria. He is limited to the idea that I am there now, I know how I fought my way there, I wasn’t brought there by democracy. I was brought there by sheer effectiveness of my own ruthlessness. Now that I am there, you have to be more ruthless than me to get me out of here. So, he is not pretending. We had interactions with him in the state house with all the political parties when he passed the electoral act and he told them, ‘listen, I suffered, go and suffer your own.’
You are interpreting that to to mean telling them to be ruthless as well, right?
He spoke English language and you know, his English is always simple. It’s clear. He said: “It’s my turn. Why should I favour you now?”
I think you misconstrued him. What he has always said is that you cannot lay the internal weaknesses of your party at his own door step…
I am saying what he spoke with his own mouth. You are talking about what his spokesperson is saying on his behalf. He said when I was in opposition I suffered it, the game is sweet when you are winning. So, go and deal with it.
Do you think the opposition is ready to pay for the sacrifice?
What is opposition? Opposition is what you do, not just merely what you say. Some of the people in opposition are mercenaries and sabotuers. Some of them are also causing problems for themselves. But, the key issue is that if we are to oppose President Tinubu, there are three things we need to do. One, our action in the running of our political party is not lawlessness. Secondly, we must oppose in principle and mobilise Nigerians. Thirdly, we must create a contrast. You shouldn’t look like Tinubu, if you want Nigerians to help you in defeating that government. You have to bring a sharp contrast that will be like day and night or black and white. Nigerians must see that there is a clear alternative. I know that today if President Tinubu remembers the SDP, his own mind is to destroy it or destabilise it. It’s not new to me, the question is, are we going to enable him?
