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By Chukwudi Nweje
Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) for the 2023 general election, Adewole Adebayo in this interview discusses why Nigerians must reject the establishment parties, ASUU strike, and other national issues.
The 2023 general election is around the corner and Nigerians are concerned that the polls may experience hitches due to insecurity in the country; as a candidate and citizen, how do you gauge the pulse of the nation?
Nigerians see the election as a priority; they have discovered that over time, elections change the lives of those elected while the lives of the electorate get worse but people are preoccupied with how to stay alive in the mist of the insecurity and how to keep their families up to the challenges of the hyperinflation in the country. Many have lost their jobs and those working don’t get paid when due and the little they get cannot take care of their basic needs. Our youths are out of school because of the ASUU strike. The hope is that the government of the day will have the milk of human kindness to provide relief for the insecurity and widespread poverty that presently hurt the people before the general election.
How do you think the current situation in the country will affect the election?
I am concerned that some people may lose their lives between now and election day. I am concerned that people may lose hope in Nigeria, and I am concerned that people may think they can seek temporary relief, and I am concerned that on election day, some may be tempted to accept what they can get in exchange for their votes. But I will urge Nigerians not to lose hope or sell their votes. The election is a one-day affair but the choice they make will linger with them for the next four years. I am confident that when I get elected in 2023, these problems will disappear. My party and I are appealing to Nigerians to have hope because a permanent solution is coming. To those in power now, we are telling them to address the insecurity and other problems as a matter of urgency because they too could fall victims of the insecurity.
Some permanent voters’ cards were recently discovered dumped in a drainage in Rivers State, what is your take?
It is disappointing and annoying; the owners of these PVCs may not even know that they were dumped somewhere. That may account for the many cases of people who cannot find their card; there could be many more PVCs abandoned in other places. It is a good thing that these PVCs were discovered now, so I will advise the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to reissue PVC to those who registered but cannot find their card; the INEC has a database; it is just like an ATM card, the fact that you lost your ATM card does not mean you don’t have a bank account.
Some people believe that the PVCs were dumped because INEC’s new bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS) style makes it impossible for impersonators to use them for rigging?
Many factors could be responsible, it could be mishandling, and it could be sabotage. Some politicians may actually be responsible to dampen the turnout of voters in areas they don’t feel strong. INEC should act now to address the situation. Every institution should have a counter measure for dealing with such aberrations. Institution could be sabotaged from either within or outside by people who do not mean well for the system. Reproducing these PVCs cannot be more than 5 per cent of INEC budget for the election. Every registered voter must be issued with his / her PVC.
ASUU has been on strike for six months now, and academic sessions have been lost; if you were president, how would you have handled the matter?
Any president on whose watch ASUU goes on strike for 10 days ought to resign. You should either take ASUU to the Industrial Court and prove to the country that ASUU is wrong and should go back to work; or you get a court injunction to order them back to work; this way you would have proved to everybody that ASUU is wrong. But for this government to sit down knowing that ASUU is right, and keep giving lame excuses is shameful. What this government is actually telling our young people is that they and education do not matter in our country. These young people are the segment of the population to pass knowledge to the next generation, and any government that is worth being called a government should not allow what is going on to happen. It is unfortunate that the two longest strikes since 1999 have happened under this Buhari administration. The Education Trust Fund (ETF) is money from the private sector, and government has no business making itself a trustee of the fund; the EFT should be independent of the government and the trustees should be eminent and trustworthy Nigerians.
Employers of labour often complain that Nigerian graduates do not have skills; this has been worsened by incessant ASUU strikes, how would you address that?
I am an employer of labour myself and I do massive training and retraining of my employees. One way of addressing the skills deficiency is that the government should not interfere with what the university teaches. The university commission should be in-charge of university curriculum and advice on areas of gaps and deficiency. The universities also need adequate funding, and there is need to ensure that the curriculum is abreast with contemporary trends. For instance, has the curriculum been updated to include crypto currency for students of economics and banking; are electrical engineering students being taught grey energy and so on? Our university curriculum needs to be abreast with these current trends.
Why do you think you will make a better president than the candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and the Labour Party?
The truth is that these other presidential candidates have governed before; none of them spent less than eight years straight in the respective office they held, and they did not solve any problem. The problems of poverty, insecurity, lack of infrastructure, and unemployment among others, the major situations we complain about are still widespread across the 36 states of the federation. All these other candidates did not address the problems when they were in their respective offices; they are all part of the same establishment, they are like triplets who grew up and decided to belong to different political parties.
Are you worried by the massive Obi-dient movement on social media?
I am not, I’m actually happy about it because it shows that Nigerians are beginning to be active in politics. I was worried why Nigerians will rally around things like football and TV shows but when it comes to politics, they are not so enthusiastic. I noticed how young people rallied around me when I came out and started talking about politics of change; I also noticed how people rallied around the former PDP aspirant when he joined the Labour Party. In fact, I will encourage those in the Obi-dient movement to keep up their activities to show the establishment parties that Nigerians are ready. For me and others in the 3rd Force, we are ready; we know what to do to win the election and make a difference.
You talk about 3rd Force, but the group, under the umbrella of National Consultative Front (NCFront) has adopted Labour Party, what do you say about that?
Labour Party is one of the political parties in the NCFront. Labour Party admitted somebody who is not of the 3rd Force to lead them; in fact, he is part of the establishment 3rd Force is fighting. We believed that is an abomination; you can admit people from outside to join the 3rd Force but you do not admit them to lead you because they will lead you back to Egypt. The implication of allowing them to lead you is that even when you win, you have lost. There are two ways to lose, you can either lose at the election or you can win the election and then lose the government because the government will not look like what you promised the people. It will be like 2015 when activists bought into the bogus claims of newPDP and started following Buhari but when he won, he started behaving like the establishment. As it is, every political party in the 3rd Force remains with their respective political party.
President Muhammadu Buhari recently approved the sum of N1.4 billion for Niger Republic for the purchase of Prado sport utility vehicles (SUV), some say it is to assist in the war against insecurity, what do you make of that?
We don’t really know what the money was meant for because the purchase of SUVs and fighting insecurity are not the same. But if the President of Nigeria decides to fight insecurity in Niger Republic, he will be doing his job. Nigeria fought insecurity in Liberia and Sierra Lone under ECOMOG when we did not have as much money as we have now; the United States of America fought terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq. To keep your country safe, you need stability at your borders, and Niger Republic is our immediate neighbour. What shocks me is that he is being so explicit about it, it should be implicit. Also, buying the SUVs through civilian processing indicates to me that they could be for other purposes that are not national security reasons.
Nigeria is building a railway and constructing a road to Niger Republic, what is it between President Buhari and Niger Republic?
Perhaps, it is destiny, look at our names, the difference is just two alphabets i and a; we are named after the same river. Most families in Calabar have their siblings in Cameroon, the same way people in Borno and Adamawa have siblings in Cameroon; if you go further North, people there have families in Chad and Niger Republic, I think it is the error of Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885 that disintegrated us. We need to maintain good relations with our neighbours. God forbid, if we don’t manage our affairs well and have to run, we will pass through our neighbouring countries before we get to Europe. The reason why Nigerians are asking what the special interest the president has in Niger republic is because the government has neglected home affairs.
