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By Sunday Ani
The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has lamented that 65 years after independence, Nigerian politicians still make corruption a campaign programme.
He stressed that Nigeria is probably one of the few countries in the world that still campaigns against corruption, even though every decent person knows corruption is not good.
He lamented that instead of seeing corruption as something that should not even arise in the first place, successive administrations have used it as a campaign thrust.
“It’s not a political programme. It is admitted by most people in the world, most civilisations, 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 political programmes,” he said.
He also debunked the rumours in certain quarters that the party was covertly working for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
He said he was not aware of such an arrangement, stressing that the only thing he knows is what the party is doing to strategise ahead of the 2027 elections.
He, however, agreed that some party members could have their loyalty outside the party, but stressed that it is one of the problems that the party leadership is battling to solve. “We don’t know the rumours and talk, but what I know is what the party is doing. I only participate in what the SDP is doing officially.
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“But what I find out is that people who are in political parties tend to have loyalty outside their political parties. I think it’s part of the problems we try to solve by bringing more ethical leaders.
“But all my politics, 100 per cent of my own politics, is done inside the SDP. And this day and time, there is no way you could have a relationship with people that there won’t be evidence of it. Either 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, if you want to know, other than just passing rumour or propaganda, you will know.
“So, there may be elements of people in the SDP who have sympathies for other parties as well, but what we intend to do is when we catch them, we relegate them or expel them,” he said.
He also stated that Nigeria’s perennial problems are traceable to its history.
He noted that the history of Nigeria is rooted in trade, that of an external necessity for trade. “Nigeria started merely as a trade zone, just like you have a free trade zone or export processing zone nowadays.
“So it’s a zone. It’s like the arbitrariness with which they created areas for discos. Lagos disco, Ibadan disco, Benin disco, Yola disco, different discos, you know.
“That’s how Nigeria was to the Royal Niger Company. It was just a trade zone. And those trade zones are different kingdoms and communities and all of that,” he said
