Adewole Ebenezer Adebayo has become a household name since after he contested the general elections in 2023 as presidential candidate on the platform of Social Democratic Party SDP.
In this interview, this lawyer-businessman-turned-politician laments the state of nation due to what he calls the wrong policies of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. He also speaks on the wave of defections into the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) by key members of the opposition parties among other issues in the polity.
How do you want to go about achieving your ambition of planting 100 million trees in your lifetime?
Well, you start by taking action. Today is May 12, and it’s just 10am and we’ve planted 100 trees. Look at how many steps you take in your lifetime, how many times you blink your eyes, how many times you breathe in and out. So, all these are biological actions.
Even when you are sleeping, these actions are going on. And you are polluting as well because every step you take including eating food or throwing it away, drinking water from the sachet and throwing it away, you’re also polluting. So, it’s about taking action. Before you know it, the number will accumulate. Hundred million sounds like a big number, but if you take steps every day, it’s achievable. There are days when you do a lot, and there are days when you do less. The accumulated thing, you will get there.
Late last year, conversations and discussions, permutations, calculations and even multiplications and subtractions started popping up as regards the 2027 elections. And then the idea and talks of coalition emerged along the line, and then the defection rush came to dominate the political scene, where bigwigs from opposition parties started moving from one party to another, but most of them defected to the ruling All Progressives Congress, that’s the party at the centre.
When opposition figures raised eyebrows about this scale of defections, the Presidency responded by saying that the opposition members were defecting because President Bola Tinubu is providing good leadership. For you, is it about Tinubu’s good leadership style that is attracting people to the opposition, or do you think there is more to it?
Number one, where is the real opposition in Nigeria? The people that you call opposition are establishment politicians who are changing from one establishment party to the other.
So, someone who is in PDP cannot say that he is in opposition, because after the APC, the PDP has the highest number of governors, senators, House of Representatives members and Houses of Assembly members. And even in the APC government of President Tinubu, PDP has ministers in it. So, they are moving from one room to the other in the same house. That is not relocation; that is just mere rearrangement within the house.
So, I am yet to see anybody who is a genuine opposition politician, who is in opposition because they don’t like the ideology and methodology and the outcome of these establishment politicians. Such people won’t be able to move. And for us in the SDP, we have seen a lot of people moving to us as well. I think more people are moving to the SDP than they are moving to the APC. And we welcome those who are moving to the SDP, but we always ask ourselves the questions: If you move to us, has your mind moved to us? Do you now believe in what we believe? If you are part of those who have been giving problems to Nigeria, are you willing to change? Are you repenting? If you are, you’ve had policies that hurt the poor, you have done injustice and you have misused public resources.
The mere fact that you have changed from APC to SDP, should we forget about all of that and should we not address these issues? So, we don’t look at counting governors, senators, former this, or former that. We are trying to mobilise Nigerians to change politics.
Changing parties without changing politics is of no importance to the poor man. APC is ruling and the poor man is crying. As far as the poor man is concerned, it is not the logo of the party that is inflicting the punishment on them. It is the people in the party. Why is it that in a country rich and full of resources like ours, poverty is increasing, insecurity is increasing, injustice is increasing, corruption is increasing, and underdevelopment is getting deeper? That is the question, so, whichever party you move to is really your personal choice.
There is this fear that Nigeria could be tilting towards a one-party state. Some observers also foresee a possible implosion within the APC due to this massive inflow of opposition parties’ members. What are your reactions to these two questions?
Number one; there cannot be a one-party state in Nigeria because there’s no system of welfare. There’s no system of employment. There’s no system of security. The benefits of politics are flowing in the direction of politicians. And a welfare politician changing from party to party cannot say he’s in the same coalition with the poor, who cannot pay their children’s school fees, who cannot sleep well at home, who cannot keep a job. And if they have a job, the pay from that job cannot satisfy one percent of their needs. So, there cannot be a one-party state when this is not a welfare state, when it is a selfish accumulation of money for the few who are in the ruling class and the wretched people who are on the streets.
How can people who are standing in the rain waiting for a car to carry them, be a one-party system with those who are using multiple private jets paid for by the public? It is not possible. So, if all the governors go to one party, Nigeria will choose a new set of governors. If all the senators go to one party, Nigeria will choose another set of senators. So, that doesn’t make a one-party state; what makes a one-party state is the people thinking that they don’t need any other party outside the one that is ruling, or people being forced by law not to create another party. In Nigeria, you can create as many parties as you want, but what is going to sustain the party is whether the members of the party believe in that party.
And that’s what we’ve been trying to work on since we started leading the SDP, to make sure that only those who believe in the party join the party. And no matter the condition, after the last election, we were offered many positions in the government of President Tinubu. We only wish him well.
I said, no, let us sustain our SDP. Let us provide the alternative. They removed subsidy on petrol and made the people poor, yet they still can’t balance the budget. We told them not to remove the subsidy. We have a way to balance the budget by increasing the revenue being collected, using transparency, and by managing government spending to eliminate waste, and by redirecting government budgeting towards creating employment for the people.
So, that’s an alternative. We have good plans regarding security. You must have police at every level of government, so that local problems can be dealt with locally. We’ve brought a plan for agriculture, which would have eliminated seeing any herdsmen in the bushes or on the roads. We’ve brought a plan for full employment of the youth, so that you won’t find anyone going into banditry and all of that.
We offer to clean the security apparatus, so that those who are collaborating with terrorists and bandits are not the ones in charge of spending government security votes. So, we put all of those plans in place, and we intend to expand agriculture, instead of using the money for fancy projects that you do not see.
When we put all of this together, it’s an alternative that is still valid. So, there cannot be a one-party state, when our politics is not based on one set of ideas. Everybody will form a party based on the ideas they are pursuing.
