Prince Adewole Adebayo, the 2023 presidential candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), has criticized President Bola Tinubu’s administration, saying the president is more focused on political maneuvering than on delivering good governance to Nigerians.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Vanguard, Adebayo scored Tinubu high in political mastery but accused him of failing the people on issues of governance, national stability, and public service delivery.
“You have to give President Tinubu an A1 in politics,” Adebayo began. “The only problem he has with the A1 is that he tends to have F9 in governance. So how is he going to graduate into any substantive legacy? That is a problem because the A1 politics is that he knows the political class very well, he knows what moves and motivates them, and he knows how to recruit them, sometimes retrench them, retire them and reengage them because he knows what they want.”
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The lawyer-turned-politician expressed regret that the president seems detached from the real needs of everyday Nigerians.
“But I wish he knew what Nigerian people want, which is basic services, stability, and security,” he lamented.
Adebayo took a swipe at President Tinubu’s recent address before the National Assembly, accusing him of prioritizing political defection narratives over more pressing issues like insecurity and poverty.
“He doesn’t need to have many people defecting to his party. If he cannot save lives in Benue, Plateau, and many parts of the country, then he has failed. The problem with that speech is forgetting the fact he was at the National Assembly in front of politicians, supposed to give accountability to Nigerians,” he said.
According to him, the celebration of political defection is meaningless to ordinary citizens grappling with hardship.
“The politicians who are now waxing albums for the president featuring the Senate President as the solo singer, and they are singing the choruses, that music is only for their ears because the rumbling in the stomach of Nigerians will not let them hear the music of the National Assembly.”
He stressed that the focus of governance should not be political triumphalism but delivery of critical services.
“So that podium belongs to the Nigerian people and it is their issues which ought to be reported there. The idea that we will assume that the political fortune of the president and his political party and his co-travellers will be the whole essence of the four-year term is most unfortunate.”
Adebayo emphasized that while political contest is legitimate, governance must begin in earnest once power is acquired.
“What you do with politics is that you compete well and I respect that the president can compete well. But if you manage to get the power somehow, controversially, at that moment, politics ends. Then, you want to give service to the Nigerian people. You want to manage the diversity of the country very well. You want to obey the Constitution.”
He also criticized the government’s approach to economic management, accusing it of being dishonest.
“The only skill you have in the management of the economy is the economisation of truth which is basically what they do, rather than manage the economy.”
When asked about whether the SDP is open to welcoming defectors from other parties, Prince Adebayo said the party remains guided by principle and the Constitution, not opportunism.
“The principles that we have in the SDP do not only belong to me, they belong to the SDP. These are manifestoes written when I was a teenager and they belong to the Nigerian people because they are found in Chapter 2 of the Nigerian Constitution,” he said.
While acknowledging that some join parties for transactional reasons, he expressed confidence in the ideological strength of the SDP.
“Among those who are coming now, some might have intentions other than ideological and people-oriented… Some who came for transactional purposes, trying to hijack a vehicle, discovered that this party exists in reality.”
He cautioned that not everyone coming from outside the party is necessarily lacking in principles.
“No, we are saying when you come in and how you interact with us will let us know whether you have come for principles or you have come to destabilise the party.”
Adebayo said the SDP is not in search of “big men with money” but ordinary Nigerians who want to build lasting structures.
“I have supreme confidence in the leadership of the party that the leadership of the party believes in the party, for that reason, if anyone comes to the party, he will have to blend in or have to move on.”
Reacting to the notion that the opposition is too weak to challenge President Tinubu, Adebayo rejected the idea that institutional or political opposition is all that matters.
“The assumption that President Tinubu has is that the people are marginal to politics, that if you capture institutions and politicians, then there is no opposition but the real opposition is coming from the people.”
He questioned the sincerity of some self-proclaimed opposition figures.
“You are going to have a problem because it’s only when they are dropped off from the list of ministers, board appointments, that is the only time they remember that they need to make this noise so that they can be brought back.”
He called for a complete overhaul of the opposition space to make it more credible and people-driven.
“We must sanitize the opposition first to know who is in the opposition or who is in opposition by convenience. So, it is not everyone calling himself opposition today who prays in the morning and says I want to be in opposition.”
Adebayo stressed that the political system should be centered on real people-oriented governance, not political theatrics or transient power games.
“What we are trying to do is quite fundamental such that when President Tinubu and all the paper castle he is building are blown away by the tide of time, he will realise that even in his old age, he needs a government that works.”
He concluded by noting that the SDP is building a structure for the long term, with a focus on attracting young, reform-minded Nigerians who are not desperate for power.
“We tend to attract young people who are not desperate to be in power within two weeks, who are ready to do the work, who are ready to grind and build a structure.”
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