By Sunday Ani
The crisis rocking the Social Democratic Party(SDP) may have ended as all members of the party have resolved to present a united front capable of winning the presidential election in 2023.
This was made known yesterday by the party’s presidential candidate, Prince Adewole Adebayo at a press conference in Lagos.
Adebayo stated that the SDP as a political party is now one united body poised to win the election and change the current hardship that Nigerians are going through.
He said: “It is very clear that Nigerians don’t want the status quo to remain. They don’t want those parties that have been in government all these years. They want a political party that is going to unite the country that is obviously disunited; a party that will show leadership, entrench democracy and justice. And that political party must first show that it has what it takes to unite its platform and that is what the SDP has been able to do today.”
Adebayo said it was possible for the party to repeat late Chief MKO Abiola’s feat in 1993, even as he noted that the party was going to run a campaign that would bid farewell to poverty and insecurity, and deliver the content of what the party signed on to in chapter two of the Nigeria constitution, which is that it would run a social democratic government.
“If we follow our constitution, SDP should automatically be in power, because chapter two of our constitution is about social programmes and investment in the Nigerian people, so that poverty can leave Nigeria. And that is why in 1993, Abiola and other contestants on the SDP platform ran on the basis of farewell to poverty,” he added.
He promised that the party’s campaign thrust would be about principles, programmes and plans; and not promises. He also assured that in two years if voted into power, there won’t be the kind of extreme poverty being experienced today in Nigeria.
“In two years of SDP presidency and national assembly, you will not be talking of extreme poverty the way we are talking about it in Nigeria today. We have outlined how we are going to deal with the issue of food, housing, primary education, health and public transportation among other things that constitute poverty. We are not promising that everybody will become a millionaire in two years but in two years of our administration, nobody will wake up in the morning and think of food, housing or basic health care as a problem,” he said.