By Sunday Ani
Twenty-Twenty-Three Presidential candidate on the platform of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, has said that technically speaking, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is in coalition with the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), because according to him, there is no difference between the two parties.
He insisted that the fact that PDP is not in government now doesn’t mean it is actually doing opposition politics, stressing that what the PDP is doing is coalition politics.
In this interview, he spoke on a wide range of issues including the planned hike in electricity tariff, the role of opposition parties and the role of judiciary in democracy among others.
What is your impression about the planned increase in electricity tariff?
What they are doing essentially is to try to dwell more on creating an electricity market and they are trying to follow example in Chile and other places where electricity is not seen just from the strategic national development point of view; the way it was reflected in our first national development plan. They are not looking at it from the social service point of view; they are looking at it like creating a market for a product. The only problem they have is that the product they are creating does not have a perfect market.
So, it will be good for the government to forget the idea of creating a perfect market. They should try as much as possible to make supply available and it is an engineering question. There is no amount of change of language that can run away from the fact that people will know when there is electricity. Remember how we used to talk about generating 5000 megawatts, now they have changed it. So, it is just a mathematical language. At the end of the day, people will know whether electricity is available, stable and affordable, and it requires a lot of investments and some of the investments have lead time.
The problem with politics is that the president has only four years and if you have an engineering project that requires 16 years of continuous investment, there is no need lying to the people that you are going to fix it in four years. You will see that many people have fallen by the wayside. Bola Ige came and said that in six months, there will be electricity. If you listened to Babatunde Fashola, by now we should be swimming in electrical current. I believe that in his house now, he is probably running on a generator. So, what we need to understand is the advice I gave in 2001. I remember in September 2001, I attended the National Council on Power and I advised them to de-politicise power and make it an investment, just like you need to de-politicise health care delivery and things like that, because these things require time and major investment.
I think the government should do more in terms of investing public money in core areas and the way we have relied too much on the national grid; the engineering requirements of the national grid are too technical for the people in the ministry to manage. So, we should do it the other way round. The grid is cheaper if it works but I think that micro grates and captain systems are more manageable and more reliable. And they need to also work on the excessive bureaucracy that they operate. I made a huge investment in electricity in my community in Ondo State and I did it through solar. The second phase I tried to engage the government and I made a heavy investment in electrification, using their grid. One and a half years later, they are still doing inspections. I have done all the engineering work and bought all the equipment. And when you buy all this equipment, everything is donated to the government automatically.
You talked about decentralising it and that’s what the president did with the signing of the Act but it appears only about 27 out of 36 states have taken it up, meaning the government has done something about that; don’t you think so?
They are decentralising the market but what I am saying generally is for them to make the power available. Even if there are statistics of capturing power, they are not capturing the investments that private people are making. They went to Tanzania looking for $35billion, but do you know how much money Nigerians spend on their own? So, we can actually plan the market better.
Nigerians are lamenting the lack of virile opposition parties in the country. What do you make of the popular view that there is no virile opposition party in Nigeria?
What I can say is that all parties that are not in government are regarded as opposition but the dynamics of Nigerian politics is not that way. Many of these parties are supposed to be in coalition. In fact, technically speaking, PDP and APC are in coalition.
…Technically in coalition; can you break it down?
This is simple. A foremost leader of the PDP is a strong minister in the administration of the APC and not only did he go there in his private capacity, he got the clearance of his party, the PDP, to go and be a minister under the APC government. You can’t get that kind of clearance from the SDP’s NWC; they can’t give you that. Secondly, we are not angry or displeased with the PDP but the fact remains that if you look at the PDP’s policies, they resemble that of the APC. So, it is good for them to try to work together. What will happen is that in the near future, ideology will be the acid test to know which party is in opposition because Nigerians don’t like to be duped. Imagine how much opposition that has been mounted against Tinubu since he became the president. People will be duped if I come to power and I start doing exactly what he is doing. And that is why I am saying that we should apply the acid test of ideology to say the fact that your party is not in government now doesn’t mean you are actually doing opposition politics. It could be that you are doing coalition politics and you are now having issues among yourselves as to how to share the spoils of office.
Peter Obi said he is not opposed to a coalition. Are you seeing the parties coming together and working together to take power from the APC? Is there a possibility of a coalition of the opposition parties?
Yes, there should be a coalition but that coalition should lead to collision. Any coalition that does not lead to collision is not a coalition, because what you want to do is to coalesce all the opposition parties so that they can oppose or collide with the ruling party. But, if you look more like the ruling party, why will I be in coalition with you? So, there must be an ideological convergence. What we in the SDP are trying to do with some other partners is that we are trying to have a consensus regarding how governance should be done. We are not interested in ganging up to remove one person. They did that against Jonathan in 2015. They tried it against Buhari in 2019 but it didn’t work. But, to be against an individual is not an ideological framework. You must agree on what to do with power; what you will do with the constitution, rule of law, public expenditure and revenues, what are the priorities in government and all those things.
Prof Jubril Ibrahim, democracy advocate, is against the idea of a few individuals owning and funding a political party. He pointed that as one of the dangers of democracy in our system; what do you think about that?
Well, I don’t think that an individual owning a party is a good thing or a real thing. PDP for example was set up in 1998; it wasn’t by one person.
Funding; where you have rich individuals seemingly taking over the party because they have the funds. What about that?
Well, that’s bad. I am not a member of their party but in SDP it is almost impossible. The SDP was set up in 1989 during the military transition and when we were revived by Chief Olu Falae and others and we came back in this current dispensation, no individual owns that political party. The person who is now the chairman is a joiner; I am a joiner; most people there are joiners and we are funded from the grassroots. We also emphasise to the people that money politics is not the best. I think the problem of the other political parties is that when they are in government, they try to use government resources to fund their activities and that is why their governors and former governors become powerful because when politics is based on money those who have money will dominate. But, in a party like the SDP where the party’s politics is based on ideology, those who are deep thinkers; those who can explain the ideology of the party, tend to be the candidates of the party.
Where does all this leave the electorate? Do you subscribe to the fact that the electorate is getting the short end of the stick when it comes to choosing their leaders? Atiku Abubakar said the biggest problem of democracy is the judiciary; how do you explain all these narratives?
Well, I wouldn’t say the judiciary is the biggest problem of democracy. The biggest problem of democracy is the politicians because they are the ones that rig elections. They are the ones that file petitions. The judiciary is just intervening. Of course, it is unfortunate for the judiciary that on many occasions, they have not been able to do their own part but they are not the main cause.