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By Jude Idu, Abuja
The presidential candidate of the Young Progressive Party (YPP), Dr Peter Agada, has again kicked against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s foreign loans from the West and the East. In this interview with Daily Sun, held ahead of the party’s substitution primaries, Agada argued that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) has misplaced its priorities, spending heavily on the upkeep of Aso Villa when the same funds could build over 44,000 houses for poor Nigerians every year. He also spoke on his defection from the Labour Party, his vision for a leaner government, and why he believes Nigeria’s political parties must be built on ideology rather than ambition.
Can you tell us the challenges you have faced during the substitution primaries in YPP?
YPP is a veritable party. It has been registered since 2016/17, has a party constitution, and is an ideology driven party. From my interactions with the leadership, including the National Chairman, Bishop Amakiri, the National Secretary, Aisha Mahmoud, the Deputy National Chairman, and the entire National Working Committee, I can say they are fantastic people who mean well for the party and not for themselves. When a party has such leadership, it produces good and quality candidates to lead the country. That is their own contribution to national development.
Because they think this way, they do not allow just anybody in, unlike the party I came from, where people behave like sharks looking for prey. These men are nation builders who have rejected many people wealthier than me, because they ask what you want to do for the country. I told them who I am, and by the time I presented my plans, I could see that they understood. My submission about what I want to do for the nation outweighed all the negative talk about my leaving the Labour Party. They believed I carried a programme that fit their party manifesto like a jigsaw puzzle, and since then many support groups have begun to key into my programme. I have not faced any challenges since I joined YPP, because these people prefer virtue and value to money. If all Nigerian parties were like this, we would be truly blessed.
These leaders have also fenced off aspirants who lack ideas or concepts, and they do not want anyone in their party who has nothing to offer. At one point, when I had disagreements with them, they refunded my money, including the funds I had donated freely. That shows how principled these people are. The party is a fantastic structure that separates the weeds from the crop. As we speak, a primary has already taken place, and after all the necessary checks, only one candidate qualified.
Those who joined YPP in the past left after getting what they wanted. Could that happen with you too?
The answer is a firm no. Take a look at the party constitution; that is what guides me. I do not associate with any party without checks built into its manifesto. Even in the Labour Party, what kept me there was the constitution, because it held what I was looking for. I find it difficult to commit myself where there is no ideology driving a party. Only this morning I was reflecting on Jeffrey Sachs, and last week I was thinking about Patrice Lumumba. These are men who spoke about the awakening of Africa and about moving this continent forward to take its place among the community of nations. My thinking aligns with theirs: we already know where the challenges lie. If a party does not have a political ideology that connects with this thinking, then I may have no business in Nigerian politics. I saw this ideology reflected in the YPP constitution, much as I once saw it in the Labour Party’s. For the record, I want to share part of a conversation I had with the Deputy National Chairman, Aisha Mahmoud. I sent her a statement from Jeffrey Sachs, in which he said the West and the East should stop funding our development. That is precisely my message to Nigerians. I have built my career in Nigeria without borrowing a single kobo, and I run the largest acoustics organisation on earth, having handled projects far bigger than most Nigerian architects ever will. If I could succeed without borrowing, then Nigeria, with its enormous natural resources, does not need to borrow either.
When I shared this view with Mahmoud, she agreed that it reinforced the very points I had been making, and said my message was becoming clear. My position is that the West and the East do not need to fund us at all. We must interrogate the structure of external financing, currency exposure and dependency far more seriously. If we shut the door to borrowing and develop with what God has given us, while eliminating waste and corruption, we would be home and dry.
Let me also point out that the money spent maintaining Aso Villa every year could comfortably build another 44,000 houses for Nigerians. That is just the Villa, without even considering the National Assembly or the governors’ residences across the states. By my calculations, a lean governance policy could save the country about N1.9 trillion within a hundred days in office. That is an outrageous sum to be wasting. We need to operate a lean government, merge ministries and cut waste. So to answer your question directly, I am not simply looking for a platform. I am looking for one whose ideology aligns with pan-Africanism, because our descendants deserve a place in the world. If Nigeria develops while the rest of Africa does not, the pressure will remain on us. That is why I joined YPP: its constitution lines up with this thinking, much as the Labour Party’s once did before it was corrupted by political patronage. I believe the ideology of the Labour Party is effectively dead for now, though its constitution remains sound. Perhaps once the current administration has passed, we can revive the true NLC/TUC values the party was built on.
Fundamentally, I am driven by ideology, but unfortunately our nation has not been built that way, so we must start again. On the question of the late Ifeanyi Ubah leaving the party he founded, I would say that those driven by nation building are not primarily concerned with holding office. I love the presidency because it would allow me to serve the nation on a large scale, with resources at my disposal. But some people want office at all costs. I do not. If the cause I am pursuing brings the office to me, with the backing of the people, I will take it. If not, I am prepared to keep building until the opportunity comes. That is not desperation. I met the late Ifeanyi Ubah’s colleague and fellow founding member, Engineer Edwin Igbokwe, husband of the late singer Ese Igbokwe, who confirmed his role in founding the party. Ubah was a fantastic man, a lover of youth development who was drawn into politics partly because he wanted to become governor. Some people invest heavily in politics expecting their money to bring them fame and office, unwilling to operate at a loss. Sacrifice of that kind is rare in our politics. Ubah sacrificed a great deal to build his party, but when it became difficult to gain popularity, he moved to a platform he felt could deliver that for him. That does not make him, or others like him, bad people. The difference is that I am prepared to remain in my party even if it does not deliver the presidency in 2027.
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My business is doing very well and is ready to expand internationally. I have already registered Cyrus as a UK limited company, which can be confirmed. My plan for 2026, before this political interruption, was to relocate to the United Kingdom and begin large scale acoustics work, restoring centuries old structures. I intend to package that proposal with my partners once the opportunity allows. My business could easily make me the Dangote of my industry, so I am not desperate for office. I see myself as a bridge between an older generation, including people like Peter Obi, Pat Utomi, Tunde Bakare, former President Goodluck Jonathan and Mallam Nasir El Rufai, and the younger generation now coming up, many of whom feel cut off from the system. They are a demographic majority but a political minority in Nigeria. I asked myself whether, if I waited until 2031, this younger generation would still have a country to inherit, given the crises we face, including about 20 million out of school children in the north and the uncertain future of almajiri children over the next four years. That is why I entered the race. I am not desperate, but circumstances have placed me where I am.
Is there any possibility of YPP entering a coalition ahead of the 2027 elections?
What exactly would we be coalescing around, and with whom? I sit somewhere between the centre and the left ideologically, which means anyone or any group whose ideas do not align with mine falls outside my consideration. I believe in an ideology that awakens us as a people, one that makes our 238 million citizens part of an inclusive economy, rather than one that allows two or three per cent of the population to hold all the wealth while the rest go hungry and die in poverty. It is an ideology that frees Nigerian youth, who are currently marginalised, to become active and engaged. My ideology does not promise the youth a better tomorrow; it promises them a better today. It is an ideology under which a president would leave the expensive Aso Villa for a modest three bedroom bungalow in Wuse Zone 2, ending the enormous cost of maintaining that property. It is an ideology in which the president could run the nation’s affairs from home, with members of parliament serving as volunteers who meet once or twice a month without sitting allowances. Can people not offer free service to their country? Where is the sacrifice of leadership shown by men like Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo and Tafawa Balewa when they fought for independence? If I do not see that spirit reflected elsewhere, then what exactly are we coalescing around? We are, in many respects, in a worse position today than during the struggle for independence. This question came up at a meeting at the party office last week, and I made clear that anyone approaching us must first believe in our party’s ideology. The fact is that others cannot match our commitment to a system where funds flow directly from Abuja to the wards, bypassing waste at the state and local government levels, with genuine oversight but direct policy implementation at ward level. Can they commit to channelling several billion naira directly to each of Nigeria’s 889 wards, distributed equally?
Apart from the roughly three million members already registered across 12 states, how many people has your movement added to YPP since you joined? That number has more than doubled, though I cannot give an exact figure. From my movement alone, I have brought in over four million people. I am targeting about 20 million people between now and December, many of whom currently show political apathy. Most of these people first come through Movement Nigeria before registering as YPP members, and many identify more strongly with Movement Nigeria than with the party itself. My approach is to make a public declaration of intent and invite members of the movement to follow me into the party. Once that happens, we will have clearer data on the demographic breakdown, though I do not have detailed analytics at this stage.
The party secretariat updates me weekly on new registrations, so the process is ongoing. Not every member of Movement Nigeria will join YPP, but I expect many people from other political parties to vote for me as well. It would be wrong to assume that only card carrying YPP members will support me. Young people cut across all political parties, and Movement Nigeria itself is apolitical, drawing members from across the political spectrum, including many who belong to no party at all. It is a broad, homogeneous movement of people with differing political beliefs united around Nigeria’s economic development.
What is your view on an independent candidacy for Nigeria, given that party ideologies appear to have failed?
If I did not believe party ideology could work in Nigeria, I would myself be running as an independent candidate. An independent candidacy is sorely needed if our system would permit it: someone rising without any party manifesto or constitution, offering something genuinely new and different from what everyone else presents as policy. In some ways, I already fit that description, because my ideology sits neither with right wing capitalism nor left wing socialism. I occupy a space from the centre to the left, which I describe as ward capitalism, a model built around secretariats functioning at ward level. Some of my policies are liberal, others conservative, and others capitalist. I believe in attracting investment, which requires a free market approach, but I also believe strongly in protecting ordinary people through a social safety net. For instance, education must receive at least 15 per cent of GDP, without exception. Were it not for the free education I received from the Lagos State government under Alhaji Lateef Jakande, taught in part by Indian and Ghanaian teachers over nearly twelve years of my education, I would not be where I am today. Yet we have since allowed that system to deteriorate. Today, over 20 million children are out of school in the north and about 10 million in the south.
Healthcare must also be free, as a matter of right, not something people must apply for through insurance. Government exists to hold our collective resources in trust and to work for the welfare of everyone. Just as I take responsibility for my own children because I fathered them, government owes the same duty of care to its citizens. It troubles me that government is now pushing citizens towards student loans to access 21st century education. What right does any government have to privatise its citizens’ access to education and healthcare? So, in many respects, I already represent an independent minded candidacy, though my task now is to awaken the Nigerian youth, a demographic majority that has been cut off from economic inclusion. The next closest constituency to me is Nigerian labour, the downtrodden union members who were being paid just seventy thousand naira a month, at a time when it was announced that army privates would begin earning one hundred and eighty thousand naira, in a nation that spends billions maintaining Aso Villa every year. That is why I associated myself with the Labour Party in the first place.
Now that you have moved to YPP, what becomes of LabourDirect, which was structured to be driven by the labour unions?
LabourDirect is now being driven by YPP. Our policies are so closely aligned that the points of convergence far outnumber the points of difference. A few days ago, the National Chairman of the party personally received a voluminous document containing the details of LabourDirect and took it away happily to work on. The leadership of the Labour Party knows that I remain one of them in spirit, but the platform itself has become too weak to carry that vision forward, and it is no longer driven by genuine labour interests. I do not consider them bad people. Senator Nenadi Usman still calls me her son, and we have resolved our differences amicably. They even refunded the fifty million naira I had paid as an expression of interest fee, after the party zoned its presidential ticket to the south, a region I am not from.
