SDP not working for APC — Adebayo

The candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the 2023 presidential election, Prince Adewole Adebayo, has debunked insinuations that the party was covertly working for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

He said he was not aware of any such arrangement, stressing that the SDP was currently strategising ahead of the 2027 elections.

He, however, admitted that some party members could have their loyalties elsewhere but noted that this was one of the challenges the party leadership was working to address.

“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.

“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 in more ethical leaders.

“But all my politics — 100 per cent of my own politics — is done inside the SDP. And in this day and time, there is no way you could have relationships with people without 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, other than just passing rumours 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 or expel them,” he said.

On Nigeria’s 65 years of independence, Adebayo lamented that leaders had failed to live up to the dreams of the country’s founding fathers.

He decried the fact that corruption and the rule of law had remained recurring campaign issues 65 years after independence — a development he described as unfortunate.

He noted that everyone knew corruption was bad and unacceptable and should not exist in the system, but lamented that instead of treating it as something that should not arise in the first place, successive administrations had used it as a campaign thrust.

He also stated that Nigeria’s perennial problems were traceable to its history.

According to him, the history of Nigeria is rooted in trade, one driven by external necessity.

“Nigeria started merely as a trade zone, just like you have free trade zones or export processing zones 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 were different kingdoms and communities and all of that,” he said.