Adebayo: SDP is Governed By Processes and Procedures That Must Be Followed 

Prince Adewole Adebayo is the leader of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and its presidential candidate in the 2023 general election. The party appears to be the new bride of politicians in the country as notable names in the polity have been defecting to join it. In this interview, this prince of Ondo Kingdom said while the party opens its doors to everyone, it is governed by processes and procedures that must be followed

Is the Social Democratic Party (SDP) the emerging mega force or mega party ahead of 2027? Or has the SDP become the beautiful bride for disgruntled and internally displaced politicians who are unhappy with their political parties?

Well, it is normal for people who are not satisfied with the state of affairs to try to find a remedy for them and to go to places where they think they can have a platform. So, the first set of people who are not satisfied and who have chosen the SDP are the poor masses of Nigeria because the problems in our governance impact them more than the elite when you talk of hunger, unemployment, insecurity, rising factor costs, and other social problems. So, that’s why the poor people have always been on the side of the SDP. But occasionally when you don’t address injustice, poverty and all kinds of inequity, it will start affecting the elite little by little. What the poor can endure for 40 years, when it happens to the elite for 40 days, they cannot endure it. So everything that we have been saying about President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) and even about President Muhammadu Buhari before Tinubu came, are happening now. And many of the chief explainers and defenders have started flocking to our side when a bit of what we have been saying started happening to them. So, we cannot now reject people from coming to us. We’ve always been the one inviting every Nigerian who believes that the current system is not fair to come and join us in giving the people an alternative platform. So, if you come, you’re always welcome. If you become a Muslim at the age of 70, that’s when you start going to the mosque. If you become a Christian at the age of 80, that’s when you start going to church. But, we cannot criticize people’s motives for coming. A political party is a public institution, like a church or a mosque. When somebody spreads his mat in a mosque and wants to pray, you cannot say, where were you last night? Where have you been during your life? Let them pray. If you come to a church, you sit at the pew and say you want to kneel and pray, the pastor cannot say, wait, I saw you at the nightclub last night. He has to allow you to pray. So coming to the mosque to pray does not mean that you will be made the Chief Imam. Coming to the church to pray doesn’t mean you are going to be anointed as a Bishop, but you are free to come because it’s a place that allows everyone to come.

We know the political antecedents of some of these people that you are opening your arms to welcome and we know why they have suddenly found you as a beautiful bride; aren’t you worried?

Well, what I can say, generally speaking, is that as a political party, we know where we are going and the people who are coming are wholeheartedly welcomed. We’re not grudgingly welcoming them. We are happy to have them because we are sure of our processes. We are sure of our systems, and we have understudied the calamities that befell parties that came before us. We are the oldest party. We are older than APC. We are older than PDP. And we have had good experiences over time. And if you look at the convention that produced me in June 2022; if you compare the convention that produced even Donald Duke, which Jerry Gana went to challenge, and you look at the convention that produced MKO Abiola, we’ve always had very good conventions. Our conventions are not controversial. In the case of Abiola, he won the election and they annulled it. In the case of Duke, they went to court among themselves, and the party thought that they are not doing what the party wants the two of them were expelled; let them go and fight it out. So in my own case, almost everybody, I think everybody who contested against me agreed to work with me and became directors on the campaign. So I don’t see a problem here. We have a process that works. We are like a military school where parents send their deviant children to go and learn manners. So, when you see how our system works, you see our national chairman, he’s just 52 or 53 years old. He looks small and young, but he’s tough and he has experience. So no matter where you are coming from, he knows what to do. Our national secretary has worked in parliament. He’s a first-class brain.

Do you have a national secretary? I thought that was being disputed too, didn’t Dr Olu Agunloye used to be your secretary?

He’s still our secretary. He will be our secretary for as long as his tenure. He has a tenure that began on June 8, 2022, and I will carry him till June 2026.  So he’s our national secretary.

Are you aware that there are some moves against him already?

There are always moves. You have to understand that politics is a dynamic game and there are moves. And I don’t know how your media house works, but I believe that there are moves to even come and take this your position; so life is all about competition. I’m making moves to take President Tinubu’s job. He knows that. The reason I’m here is because I’m making moves to take his job. These jobs are not inherited. But when you have a legal system, you have a constitutional order, and you have institutions and processes, I think that you would probably be aiming for the national secretary’s job, but the only time you are going to get it is when the competition comes. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t tackle you here and there, but our processes are solid. Remember also that the SDP is not a party of drama. So, a lot of the dramas that people are seeing are dramas that take place outside. When you come to the SDP, some of the names you are mentioning here are names that make news, and they are highly important people in our political system. But, when they come to the SDP, they are just members. Strictly speaking, there’s nothing else.

You describe the SDP as the oldest political party now, and a lot of people probably don’t understand that. Is the SDP we have now the same SDP that we had in the aborted Third Republic that produced the late MKO Abiola?

It’s the same SDP, the same characters, except those who died or those who left to go and join other parties.

Were the SDP and NRC not proscribed by the military at that time?

It was proscribed, but when you proscribe, once you have a new constitution, the proscription comes to an end. Once we’ve promulgated the 1999 constitution, you can’t proscribe again.

But the 1999 constitution will not expel the SDP…

That’s why we went to register. We registered with the same name, the same manifesto and the same slogan Abiola used to run. Same logo of farewell to poverty and the white horse and that horse is going to be there for a while. So what I see generally speaking, is that a lot is going on. Everybody has their purpose and ambition. Like I said, the analogy is like a church. Some people go to church to cure diseases, some go there to exercise their faith, some go there to look for a marriage partner, some go there to look for a business partner and some go there for a salary. If you work in the church as a cleaner, that’s where you work, but the church remains the same. So there may be people who come to SDP because they want to use their platform to kind of address personal injustice they perceive. Some use it to try to come and seek political office, some are just there because they want a good country for us. But whatever the motive of every person, it’s a legitimate desire. What the SDP is trying to do is to be a political party that people can look at and say, this party has processes, the institutions work. So when you look at the configuration of the National Working Committee, you see people who are talking in the interest of the party and the country. They are not surrogates representing personal interests, and you cannot come and say, oh, I don’t like the youth leader. I have my bodyguard, my son or my PA. Let him become the youth. The party will say, no, we don’t work that way. So everyone is representing a zone or a region or some interest. In addition to that, they represent some ideology. So it’s clear. So don’t let us worry.

Nigerians are worried that when political parties like the SDP that has been crisis-free with no unusual things happening, no allegations or counter-allegations of embezzlement and things like that begin to open its doors and begin to swallow all manners of bids, that there is the possibility of you losing your ship and the possibility of those things you swallow, disfiguring you to the extent that the SDP loses its form and format; don’t you think so?

What I see is that it is a constitutional mandate for us to get as many Nigerians into our midst as possible. We must become the majority party. We must have more members than most political parties, and we must now make sure that the members we have, have quality. We are kind of amused about the enthusiasm and the noise in the media, but in reality, every week, for the past several years, we’ve always been winning people into the party. The people who are coming now, their calibre already exists in the party. So you can say someone was a governor before, a senator before, or a minister before; we have them already in the party.

So, does that imply they are not coming with anything bigger than what you already have?

We already have. So our national chairman has been in almost every campaign since we started in 1999. He’s raised highly in his previous political party, and he saw that the party was not being run well, and he left the party many years ago. What people are saying now, he saw, he foresaw all of them. National secretary, who used to be our national chairman, you remember that we had Olu Agunloye as our national chairman, and we successfully made him become national secretary without any rancour.  That was what PDP could not do when they had Iyorchia Ayu.

Don’t you think you were able to do that because you don’t have that strength of membership?

No, it is because we have common interests. I’ve never spoken to our national chairman or met him before until I started coming to the party. We were not friends before. And the national secretary, I knew about him. We’ve never been friends. I met him at the party, as a member of the party. But we have leadership. Solomon Dalong was a minister and many things before he was a minister. And he’s been holding political office from the chairman of the local government to minister. He’s at the party quietly. Mulikat Akande-Adeola, ran for speaker against Aminu Waziri Tambuwal and it was a very strong run. She became the majority leader. She’s sitting in the party. She’s been at the party for many years. She ran for Senate last time in our party. No drama about it. Kenneth Gbagi was the minister of education, who created about 19 universities and came to run as our gubernatorial candidate in Delta State. So when I go to my ward in Ondo to attend meetings, the ward chairman is senior to me. I sit down quietly, and the ward chairman presides over the meeting. I respect the rules. So even some of the names you are mentioning now when they come, their ward chairmen are superior to them in the ranking.

Some of these people have antecedents and many of the names you mentioned, they’re big names, but who didn’t have that much electoral value in the elections? For instance, after the 2023 general election, what is the strength of the SDP?

We would have had two governors. One, you saw what happened to us in Kogi State. Everybody saw what happened to us in Kogi State.

Would you have won Kogi?

Look at the numbers. We won on numbers. All the way, they went to rig. They didn’t use BVAs in the local governments. Go and read the case. We are very fast at that with cases. All the Supreme Court was saying, yeah, we see the paper, but you didn’t front load. And they did not give it to us. So, we did very well. In Ekiti State, we did very well. We’re doing quite well, but we are not going to use unethical means, like go and pay voters, go and rig. We don’t do that because we’re not desperate. We’re just trying to help Nigerian people to get the benefit of their government. So we’re not going to come and become criminals as a result of that. And I don’t want to embarrass anyone, but you will see how tough SDP is and it’s a benefit to those who are coming. It’s a very tough party because of principles. I welcome everybody, but I always tell people that when you are in SDP, don’t feel big. Don’t feel big at all because the party has processes, just come in because the party recognizes talent. You saw when I was talking about Nasir El-Rufai, people were saying, why are you talking about him? Suppose he wants to run against you, it doesn’t matter. We respect talent. We welcome talent. We do a lot of debates. And we want to infuse quality people because the kind of programmes we have in SDP cannot be implemented by unintelligent people, with all due respect. If you were promising people all these efficiencies, I would now form a government and start rewarding people according to their political rascality. And we do not find technocratic people, people of sound gravity and ability to execute. Just imagine if I was selfish and said, don’t let Mr. El-Rufai came in. Don’t let that person come in. I can’t do that because I want good people to come in. Because when we form a government, you will have quality talents.

You said you are not worried because you already have an advanced knowledge of why these people left where they were and made your party the destination. You know somebody like El-Rufai and you know the reasons he left the APC, don’t you?

I don’t know all of it. I’ve never been to APC before and I don’t pay attention to their noise. I pay attention to what they do in government, which is terrible. I don’t know what they did inside their party and who went to Chatham House; who greeted and who didn’t greet. I don’t know. I have 24 hours in a day. I spent like 20 hours studying Nigeria’s problem. I don’t study drama outside. Once you are outside the government, I won’t pay attention to you again. I pay attention to those who are inside the government, their inefficiencies, their mismanagement, their laziness, and their inability to live off the office. But once they remove you from government, you are on your own in your house or inside your party, do whatever you like, I don’t follow you. I follow almost what every senator does. You will see that our senators and our House of Representatives members in the National Assembly don’t do drama and they face their committee work. They brief the party. When there’s an issue, we interact with them. They just want to make sure that they infuse our ethics and our manifesto into politics. And they don’t do drama. You will never find them in any discipline, fighting anybody and all of that. So, we don’t ask them to give us money and all of that.

How many senators does your party have?

We have two senators, and then we have Houses of Assembly members. We have local government chairmen and we have all of that, so, the number of senators or former senators of our party is not an issue. We’re not minimizing those who are coming in. But they’re not coming in because of their past title or whatever because we have that in abundance here. What we are trying to do is to ensure that this party has processes because society is run by institutions. And those institutions use processes and those processes are based on principles. And then you train people. So if you go and talk to a state chairman of SDP, you will see the amount of knowledge and process that they know. And party management, go and see INEC. INEC presses Shehu Gabam and Olu Agunloye because when PDP is struggling to find their form, and struggling with our audited account, everything goes there. So we have processes. And the fact that I’m your friend doesn’t mean that if you do something wrong, I am not going to criticize you. So, we have that going. When these incomers come in, there will be some culture shock because you want to show you are a big man. You sit in your house and want the NWC to come to your house because that’s what they did at your previous party. You say nobody’s going to do that. Nobody does that at all. And then you see that when you want it, you have a personal desire. People tell you, you are not interested in that. This is how we do things. So I believe that also, those who are coming in realize that we are coming in to build a system that will guide this obnoxious Tinubu administration. And if you want to get rid of an incumbent, you have to have more discipline than the incumbent. If you come and start fighting silliness, and any sort of seriousness, you are creating a gap that the ruling party would readily take advantage of and you can’t blame them. So, this is the kind of orientation we have in the SDP. So, when you come in, leave your ego at the door. Leave your ambition at the door. Leave all your problems at the door. There may be a member of ours who has a dispute with somebody like Tinubu or whatever. We don’t have a dispute with Tinubu. We have a dispute with their misgovernance. So, we want to focus on that. We don’t have an issue with anybody in person. If you don’t govern well, you are working against Nigerian people and their welfare and their security, and you are breaching Chapter 2 of the Constitution, and you are violating your oath of office, we are tackling you on that basis. Your personal affairs, we don’t want to know.

Will you be happy, for instance, if tomorrow you are sitting at home and you just hear that former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has dumped the PDP and is headed for the National Secretariat of your party to go and see the chairman to announce his membership of your party?

I won’t be at home. He will have informed me that he will be coming. So they don’t sneak in. So, we will have a discussion if he wants to come in.

But we didn’t see you there to welcome El-Rufai, and why are these people coming to declare for membership of the SDP in Abuja?

In the case of El-Rufai, he’s like a brother to the National Chairman and they are very close. He’s a personal friend and you must have seen him coming there many times. So they are close. So, when you saw him there, I was not aware he came to declare. He has gone to his ward to do that. So he’s just coming now to show his face. The same way I went to Ondo, and you know, I joined the SDP when I was 19 years old and we were posting posters, protesting and all of that. And after they cancelled, I never joined the party. I mind my business. I will continue. And then when we came back and I finished my professional work and I wanted to go back to politics, I came to the SDP. So it was natural. And I believe that someone like Vice-President Atiku Abubakar was in SDP at that time. So I don’t see how you can now deny him the right to come back if he wants to come back. The issue is that he’s coming and making noise for about two or three days, but he will have to go to his ward in Adamawa State to pick up his membership card first and start to build up. It doesn’t matter whether he has the ambition to be the Pope or anything. We don’t worry about that because the process is there. The time is coming when the National Working Committee will announce that those who have ambition should go and pick the form. It’s when you pick that form and fill it that I can say, well, you are interested too.

Wouldn’t it be too late by that time to begin to say, you can’t be interested?

No, you cannot say so because remember that these are not hereditary positions. If I want a hereditary position, I will stay in Ondo and wait to be Osemawe because that one is hereditary. Even at that, I have other princes who will be competing and vacancy will not be there in the next 70 years because the king must live forever. So there’s nothing that is given. But, this one is a constitutional office. Even if you are there, for four years, or eight years, you will leave; it’s not yours. So you cannot say that someone should not contest. SDP is like a football club. When you see Ronaldo playing a match, he competes during training with other team members to be picked. Don’t assume that because you won footballer of the year, the Golden Glove, in training, a young boy who is 17 years old will not be competing with you. And if you are not up to your game, the boy will beat you and he will be the next guy and you sit on the bench, whether you like it or not. So, that is the arrangement in the SDP. Very fair, very open, no joiner and no owner. There are people in the party who were there when Gabam came to join. So that’s not an issue.