By Chukwudi Nweje
Presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Prince Adewole Adebayo, in this interview monitored on television makes a case that emphasis on power shift should be giving the power to common Nigerians opposed to the current emphasis on region. He insists that regional shift could lead to a situation where incompetent elite will keep rotating power among themselves.
This is your first shot at political office, and you are aiming at the highest office in the country, the Office of the President, how do you assess the journey so far, and are there things you have seen that seem to deter you from continuing with the race?
I have a few regrets, one of the regrets is that I should have started earlier than now. I have wondered what I was waiting for because my thought is that as a citizen of Nigeria, what one needs is to make a good example of his / her own life and focus on how to excel in his area of professional and vocational concentration. But I now know that I should have come out earlier because the rot in the system is far more than we imagined; the need is also far more than we imagined and the quality required to turn the country around is not sufficiently included yet. My message to Nigerians if you ask me, to me is to start early. I have a 17-year-old son and I have told him and will keep telling him that he has only about five more years to become serious with politics and 10 more years to make up his mind whether he wants to be in public service or not. All the successes I have made in my personal life seem to be insignificant compared to how much good I could have done if I had become involved in public service perhaps 10 years earlier, I would have been more useful to the public than I have been useful to myself.
Do you think the conversations around the kind of president the country needs are better now compared to previous elections?
The conversations are much better but not enough. Given the gravity of the problem at hand, I will say we are not doing enough to know the issues. During the previous elections, we did not face existential threats of people who tried to kill us and prevent us from being a society or tried to kidnap our president or tried to declare various contrary sovereignty within the country. Poverty around the country has never been this debilitating and the other indices to show whether we are a healthy society – social, political, religious – and other aspects of our national life were not as dire as they are now. We still look like we are not aware yet of how serious the issues are. We all know that when you have serious issues, for instance like someone whose problem is to have a heart bypass, but he is pre-occupied with asking other cosmetic questions.
In the 2019 election, former Cross River State Governor, Donald Duke contested the Presidential Election on the platform of the SDP and scored just about 34,000 votes, you are new to politics compared to Duke. What lessons has the SDP learnt from that election?
We have learnt several lessons. Firstly, we have learnt that we cannot just give our presidential ticket to someone who does not belong to the party, someone who had problems in another political party and ran to the SDP as a fall back and automatically gets the presidential ticket. I know some political parties are currently making that mistake but the SDP has learnt its lesson. The second lesson is that the primary and convention must be conducted in a manner that there will be no reason for internal fighting in the party. In 2019, immediately after the primary and convention, somebody went to court; we were bugged down by litigation which went all the way to the Supreme Court of Nigeria, and because of that, the party and the candidate that emerged could not do what I am currently doing, going around, and interacting with various stakeholders; the third lesson we have learnt is never to demoralise members of the party. In 2019, some party members were demoralised by the court case and as the matter was dragging, many members of the party lost hope and made individual decisions; that is why the then candidate scored less votes in all the 36 states of Nigeria than the number of party members in some large local government areas. So in 2019, we edged ourselves out of the contest. This time, we are travelling in a different direction, the party has changed and you will discover that the SDP had the largest number of delegates to its convention and it was very peaceful.
When the forthcoming presidential elections are discussed, analysts make permutations on what areas different parties would likely win. You are from the South-West, what chances do you think you have against somebody like Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who is also from the South-West?
The SDP is basically about the poor, downtrodden Nigerians. Anywhere you find poor Nigerians who lack the basic necessities of living – water, light, good healthcare, basic education, among others – we stand a good chance there because we are coming to represent them. These people react more to things like hunger and insecurity than they react to state of origin; our strongholds are not regionalised according to ethnicity or religion; we are looking at people who have been left behind and you will find them in different parts of the country. In Lagos State for instance, we know where the urban poor are, we know that they are more in number than those who have been in government for the past 30 years, who when you ask of their achievements, they point at bridges and forget the thousands of people that have been left behind. This was not the approach someone like Alhaji Lateef Jakande took when he built several housing estates, schools, and bridges. Our emphasis in the SDP is not regionalised, we are looking at all the neglected areas across the country.
When you say the SDP does not believe in regionalising according to ethnicity and religion, are you saying we should have moved beyond the agitation for power shift to the South?
You can only have the argument of power rotation between the North and South or any other part of the country when you have three square meals and live in a safe environment; the elite have the luxury of this argument because they live in a safe environment, and the only thing that occupies their mind is how to rotate power among themselves. We had a President from the South-West who spent eight years in office but could not build a road to his hometown; all the villages around his hometown still look like they were when he was born 80 years ago. We shifted power to the North and had two presidents from Katsina State in less than 10 years and the people of Katsina do not know they have a president; the poverty in Katsina is still as it was when President Muhammadu Buhari was a young man. The presidency has also gone to the South-South and the creeks are still as they were 30 years ago or even worse. I am not saying that the argument of power shift cannot be made. I am saying that the people I represent tell me their priorities and their priority is to shift power from the London Club politicians who go overseas to hold meetings to the common people. What we need are leaders who will go to the State House and remember those they represent. In a democracy I take all approaches but if your focus is on just regional shift you can go from one irresponsible, incompetent, or corrupt leader to another. I believe that what we need is power shift from the elitist system to a people-oriented system. Switzerland rotates their presidency among the different languages and regions that they have but nobody there is fighting over it because none of the languages and regional groups is threatened about losing their livelihood.
Many people wonder why the SDP is not thinking of forming a coalition; as it is today, when the three to four front runners in the forthcoming elections are mentioned, you and your party, the SDP is not on the list. Why are you not considering a coalition to boost your chances of winning the election?
I am happy that people are raising these issues because it makes me feel missionary. I raised them years ago and everyone knew me then as the Third Force aspirants. There are 18 political parties in Nigeria, two of them are the big ones, there are two others who align with them and there are 14 others. We the 14 others have been talking. In January this year when I turned 50, the chairmen of these 14 political parties signed a joint statement congratulating me and commending my efforts. What I don’t believe in is escorting the wrong people to power. We need to give Nigerians the alternative and avoid allowing the establishment parties to spread themselves around. This mistake was made in 2015 when Buhari joined the APC; people were falling over themselves promoting the personality of Buhari and shouting Sai Buhari. What did we get when Buhari was eventually elected; Buhari told everybody that he belongs to nobody. This time around, there was an attempt by now APC presidential candidate to infiltrate our party, the SDP; when the clouds were dark for him in APC, there was also an attempt by the now Labour Party candidate, Mr. Peter Obi after he left the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on the eve of their convention; he came to our party and wanted to be our candidate but we rejected him.
Why did you reject Peter Obi’s attempt to join the SDP?
We are tired of having people who are disgruntled with their political party trying to join us. The direction we are going to will not allow us to accept disgruntled APC or PDP members because we will be cheating the people of the real alternative they need. Election day victory is for the politicians, the people have their victory when things work well, and we don’t want a situation where there will be victory but the people of Nigeria will not gain anything. On forming a coalition, we still have enough time between now and the election to come together.
Will you be open to a coalition that does not present you as the presidential candidate?
If you are going into a coalition, you cannot say it must be me, that will be a recruitment not a coalition. However, you can know who it should not be, I will not be part of a coalition that presents one of these London Club politicians or anyone who has questions hanging over his head, it defeats the reason for my going into politics in the first place.
You are very active on social media, what do you say to those who argue that social media supporters cannot win the election?
I think they will vote more this time around; they will not constitute the majority because that is the nature of the society. Internet penetration has not gone too far and even where there is internet, the money for data is competing with money for food. I am active on social media to try to elevate the discourse, let people reflect and gauge peoples understanding of the issues and tailor my messages.